The Days that Followed

Sleep was difficult to come by. That's nothing to say about the softness, or lack thereof, of the foam pad that I laid on — I had slept on worse surfaces, but the fact remained, that sleep was sparse that evening. Whenever I closed my eyes, the darkness beyond my lids would conjure the image of the shambling woman's face locked in perpetual horror, and the wind whistling through the tree would stir a primal fear.

At some point during that long night, a sound began to emerge on the very edge of my hearing, from the direction of the valley: the distant beating of a drum. As the night progressed, that sound crawled closer, and closer. Sounding out every once and a while as if trying to remind me that it was there as it slowly made its way toward me in a slow, steady march. Once the first rays of gray dawn began to climb in the east, the slow beat died down for good, and the mortal terror that gripped my heart dissipated like mist, and I managed to grab an hour or so of quick sleep before being woken up by the Ego.

300 squats. 300 pushups, and 1,000 swings of your sword. Start.

"Do we have to do this today?" I grumbled as I stared up at the cracked stone floor above me.

Yes.

I sighed and slammed the flat of my fist into the ground before I pushed myself up. My stomach growled, and my head swam. The day and a half of fasting had begun to take a toll on my body. I dug through the small bag of MREs near the foot of the bed pulled out one of the four I had left, and opened it with my teeth. I pulled out the stale cracker package and nibbled on them for a time: missing the old man's stew with every single chunk I took.

I wolfed down the tasteless mush they called jambalaya.

While eating, my body began to ache, and a bit of a tremble began to form. I pulled in the healing potion jug, finished the first of the two off., and sat on the sleeping pad until the withdrawal symptoms faded. Once that was over, I did my exercises: increasing my Strength by 2%, and my Swords by 3. After my exercises, I reformed the empty jug into a fish trap, stuck a chunk of the goblin meat inside, and tossed the rest of the meat far away from my camp.

I had a message from Jack come up while I was on the way back to the building:

"Hey, I'll be the one grabbing the things you need to sell! Do you need anything while I'm heading up there?"

Ask him for a book on construction.

"Can you pick me up a book on construction and furniture making?" I sent it back.

The reply was quick.

"Alright, anything else?"

"A potato stew bowl from the Cat and the Fiddle, and some alchemy supplies."

I responded while walking back to the tower.

"Alright." Came the reply, "I'll see you in two days."

I checked the jobs section of the PID: the two bounty quests were there, as well as the job to build a road connecting the tower to the highway. Along with it were two more jobs:

[DANGER] Reclaim the Ever-After Valley for the White Company

Reward:

$1,500,000, 300% All Stats, 200% All Skills

And

[Kill the Goblin Patrol] 0/8

$1,500, 5% All Stats

Let's do that one.

I accepted the job, just in case I came across them, but my primary task was to connect the ruined tower to the road. I took a drink of water and strapped my pistol and sword to my belt and began the process of cutting through the foliage with the sickle, hatchet, and hoe. I brought back whatever wood that I could carry — branches, twigs, and limbs. A little after noon — three hours into the path building, and a mile in, I catch the whiff of a scent that I found familiar, though I didn't know where I had known it from. It came from a clearing just beyond a particularly heavy thicket.

I pushed through, and stumbled upon a pasture, with a small spring bubbling in the middle that ran down in a small creek that trickled northward to join the river. The grass in this pasture was soft and loamy as if it were a kind of moss. Larger blades of grass poked up like tufts of hair and pointed flowers like lavender grew in clusters. A few of these pointed flowers were a pale white.

I plucked the purple flower first put it in the small bag I kept at my side and pulled out my PID to see what it was.

[WILD LAVENDER FOUND: FORAGING MASTERY+ 0.5%, PERCEPTION MASTERY +0.5%]

I plucked a few more, raising my foraging and perception mastery by an additional 2.5%. Lavender from the Lands Beyond, according to the foraging manual, could be boiled into a soothing tea, or used to season meals.

I then plucked one of the white flowers that looked a lot like lavender. They smelled closer to vanilla, and their petals were far more feathery.

[CASSANDRA'S THORN FOUND: FORAGING MASTERY +1%, PERCEPTION MASTERY +1%]

Cassandra's Thorn, huh? It wasn't a name that appeared in the foraging book, but in the alchemy book, it made frequent mention of it, as a base herb in energy potions. Unlike healing potions that healed fatigue and energy alike, energy potions only cured fatigue, but they had the drawback of piling up the fatigue once the herb worked its way through your body. But that was only when distilled. If taken raw, it was a potent poison that would cause your heart to explode.

I put the plucked Cassandra's Thorn into the same pouch. After that, I washed my hands off in the spring. The water was cool and crystal clear, so I dunked my head into it to take a drink.

This could be a good location for a well.

It could...wait, no. I'm not going to build a town here. For now, however, this was closer to the tower than the river was. I cut through the thicket here, and carry the wood back to where I had set up camp. While back there, I set the lavender and Cassandra's Thorns out in the sun to dry out. I took a break to carve out a few stakes to use in snare traps and set them up along the thickets in the path I was cutting through the wild land.

Why build this road if you're not going to be developing the area?

"It'll be easier to bring a trailer through."

A trailer?

"Yes. I want to order a bed." I answered.

A bed? Why?

"I couldn't sleep at all last night," I answered.

And you think your choice of bedding is the cause?

"Perhaps. It wouldn't hurt to get one, though."

After setting up the traps, and baiting them with a bit of the crackers from one of the MREs, I went back to digging out the path. By the time the sun began to set, I had carved out another 1.5 miles. 8 miles left. I'll start earlier tomorrow.

I was pulled from my sleep by the sound of a hide drum being beat once again. They started about where they left off the night before, and slowly made their way toward me. Even if I wrapped my pillow around my head I would still hear the distant beating. It neared a little closer tonight. If I had to put it somewhere, it was now just a little further than the farmhouse, nestled firmly within the arms of that amber valley.

Daylight came, and I was able to grab an hour of sleep. The fatigue was building up. Slowly, yet surely. One more day until the alchemy supplies get here and I could use those Cassandra's Thorn. The withdrawal symptoms were weaker today, but perhaps that was because of the tiredness already inflicting me. I begrudgingly began the day with my exercises, then checked the fish trap.

I had caught a strange-looking fish: it was about as long as my arm, and just as thick. How could something this big exist in a river so small? Its scales were as white as bone, while its underbelly was a soft pink. Its eyes were blood red. It had teeth as long and as sharp as nails. Half of its body was stuck inside the gallon jug trap, and it had nearly run itself aground by its thrashing and pulling and pushing.

I picked it up, drove my knife through its eye pinned it to the ground until it stopped thrashing, and checked my PID for what exactly it was.

[TRAP-MAKING MASTERY +5%]

[White Scaled Terror]

A type of fish found in some of the rivers near the Ever-After Valley. If left alone, these carnivorous fish will continue to grow until the day of its death. It was speculated by the people of the Valley that these fish make a pilgrimage across the rivers of the Lands Beyond to ascend to dragonhood. However, they have not been found anywhere but in the rivers near the valley.

(rare, monster)

A fish is a fish. I drove the knife into the gut of the creature and pulled out its innards. Its heart was about the size of my fist and sat in the middle of a row of pointed ribs. I pulled it out. It had the image of a large gate branded into its heart. I pierced it and put it to my lips. The blood was sour but had a slightly sweet aftertaste.

[HEART BLOOD CONSUMED – ANIMA MANIPULATION MASTERY +10%,, ENDURANCE +8%, SPEED +8%, REFLEXES +5%, STRENGTH +4%]

That was apparently nearly on par with the Rat King...luckily it had been caught in my trap somehow…

I set some of its guts into the fishing trap and set it back inside the river before carrying the large fish back to continue the butchering process. The scales of the creature didn't come off like normal fish scales, instead, they were attached by a thin layer of flesh to the rest of its body like a hide of a land animal. I skinned it off and managed to do it in two long strips. I scraped the bits of flesh off with my knife, and put the fat together in a small canister. The fat would be useful for alchemy, as it could be broken down into an oil.

I put the fish's meat inside of the canister that had the goblin meat and seared up one of the strips with a bit of the fat, and a sprig of lavender. It fried up nice and flaky, and tasted really good, though it had a bit of an iron-like after bite.

While eating I checked the jobs available. The Goblin Patrol was still there and had in fact grown to 10. The reward for job completion increased from 1,500 to 2,000 to reflect the new danger. I looked at the map to where they were, and they were getting nearer to my camp than the day before. I sighed and looked at the curls of smoke coming out of the still-smoldering fire pit. I suppose I should get the jump on them before they get the jump on me.

I got together the spears and some of the twigs I had gotten from the farmhouse and the barn, and tied them together on a long branch, and tied the ends of the branch to nearby trees, to hold them in place. I placed this near the mouth of the trail I had been covered. Of the information that the trap-making book had imparted, perhaps the most important was the fact that animals followed the path of least resistance.

I covered them with dust and put a small line of paracord about foot level to the top, and tied it into a snare held in place with a sharpened stake. After that, I made a quick fall trap with some gathered stones bundled together in a blanket, and used a bit of rope to hold the top together so the stones didn't trickle out of the old blanket, and tied it at about ankle height, and thinned the rope by scraping it for a moment with my knife. That was all I could do right now.

In the hour it took to make these rudimentary traps, the Goblin Patrol seemed to be at the springs. I climbed up to the second story of the tower, and brought up my rifle: making sure to reload both of my guns, before pulling my pistol and sword out, putting them on the ground beside me before pointing the pistol to the sky and firing. I looked to the PID as the sound of the shot echoed the goblin patrol began to move toward me. They rounded into the path and began moving slowly forward. A few of them crept along the edge of the paths. Scouts? Perhaps. I slid the bolt, set the gun down on the ledge of the hollow window, and watched the path and tree line.