Jackson: Everybody Loves Large Chests (Vol. 9), page 1
Everybody Loves Large Chests
Volume Nine: Jackson
A book by Neven Iliev
Prologue
The southern continent of Velos could be summarized with one word – wild. Ninety percent of the landmass was dominated by jungles, swamps, marshes, and overgrown mountains, teeming with an overabundance of life that no civilization could hope to conquer or tame. Nature ran rampant, and the wilderness flourished without restraint. Unfortunately, as one elven Druid had found out, it wasn’t quite the tropical paradise she hoped for when she first arrived. Yes, there were idyllic beaches and coastlines, but those were extremely scarce. More importantly, they were very far away from the southeastern jungle she was wading through. ‘Wild’ would certainly describe the woman’s stay in Velos thus far, though there were three more words that came to mind.
“Fuuuuck, it’s hooooot!”
Opia groaned a complaint as she wiped her sweaty brow with her bare arm. This sweltering, humid climate absolutely did not agree with the elf. Her shoulder-length, dark-green hair felt unbelievably sticky. Her bangs were practically glued to her forehead. At least they weren’t long enough to cover her matching eyes, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to see a single thing in this damnable jungle. Her face as a whole, though twisted in a displeased frown, was on the cute side and surprisingly youthful for her age. She looked to be in her early twenties, and her somewhat petite upper body reinforced this illusion. However, what lay below the waist made it clear this woman was fully matured and then some. She had wide hips, plump thighs, and a full rump resembling a juicy pear. This was despite the fact that she was in overall great shape, as were most active adventurers due to their rigorous lifestyles. For better or worse, Opia had been born with a low-ended generousness that strained against her beige shorts. Her top half wasn’t as well endowed, as one could hardly see the two modest bumps under her short-sleeved yellow blouse.
In practical terms, that outfit would be considered far too light and casual for someone in her position. Indeed, though enchanted, those garments offered almost no physical protection. This was unfortunately a necessity in the unforgiving heat. Even though the overabundant vegetation blocked the sun’s rays, the humidity in the air made heat stroke and dehydration almost as big a threat as they were in the desert. While it was possible to get specialized equipment capable of diminishing or outright negating the extreme climate’s effects, Opia wasn’t made of money. She could barely afford all the extra-strength bug repellant she needed to avoid being constantly swarmed by insects, arachnids, and other potentially dangerous critters. This went for both the small ones and their giant cousins.
Then again, one could argue that the thing keeping her safe from those vermin was actually the hydra hatchling she was riding. Though it was far from fully grown, this quadruped reptile was already larger than a horse, allowing its owner to ride its wide back with no issue. Well, other than the lack of a saddle. The beast’s rough green scales were hardly the most comfortable, and the shocks it sent through her body with every step were enough to make her generous behind jiggle constantly. Her cheeks were definitely going to be sore later, but she couldn’t do anything about it. After all, she had only met the creature less than an hour ago. She immobilized it with her Druid magic and used her Monster Tamer Skills to domesticate it. It was a bit tricky bringing the monster under her control since it had three snake-like heads, a number that would increase up to nine as it grew older and larger. The hydra – which she named Spittles – would need a lot more training before it was completely subservient. For the moment, it was only obedient enough to let her ride it without raising much of a fuss.
That wasn’t why Opia had tamed the beast, though. While large enough to trample any rampant vegetation and proceed through the thick undergrowth with little difficulty, using it as a means of transportation was simply an added bonus. In reality, the Druid had made Spittles her pet because she thought it looked adorable. It was an unpopular opinion, as this jungle’s hydras looked as hideous as they were vicious by normal people’s standards. Even the local raptors thought them unpleasant, despite having scaly hides of their own. The elf didn’t care – she knew fully well she was an oddball. If anything, it was harder to find an adventurer of her advanced Level who wasn’t a weirdo. No sane person from a stable household would take up her line of work, let alone stick with it for so long.
In Opia’s case, she just loved travelling, seeing new places, and learning about all the ways she could sail the cosmos without ever leaving the ground. It was a good thing she never took up the Alchemist trade, otherwise she’d be too busy sampling her own products to get anything useful done. Thankfully, she was too much of a free spirit to sit in a lab and mix chemicals all day. Her fascination with dangerous critters led her to sign up as a Monster Tamer on her fifteenth birthday, which was as soon as the state would allow. That was almost two decades ago. Opia’s love for the ‘adorably grotesque’ remained, but her creature-wrangling had taken a back seat to what she considered her true calling. The elf was a Druid that specialized in acids, toxins, and diseases. She was equally proficient in their treatment, prevention, and offensive applications, so long as they occurred naturally or were conjured by magic. Synthesized poisons were beyond her area of expertise due to the aforementioned unwillingness to do lab work. Or reading. Any toxicology knowledge she had was obtained first-hand through field experiments.
Okay, maybe putting it that way was a bit misleading, but ‘smoked any grass or weed that would burn’ didn’t look good on a resume. Neither would ‘got bitten on purpose to see if basilisk venom can get me high.’ Regardless of her questionable motives and general aversion to sobriety, those experiences turned Opia into who she was today. Her skill and knowledge as the world’s foremost ‘venomancer,’ as she liked to call herself, was the real deal. This extended to her affinity for handling toxic creatures, of which her new pet was a prime example. Jungle hydras, unlike their oceanic or northern cousins, had the innate ability to spit a different strain of venom from each head, giving it a variety of debilitating effects it could inflict on any prey or threat. This trait was also what gave Opia the idea for her new pet’s name, which she used affectionately. Though they’d only just met, she generally liked the big oaf, though her favorite head was without a doubt the middle one. Its venom had some potent hallucinogenic properties that made for some mind-blowing experiences or nightmarishly bad trips, depending on the dosage and the subject’s constitution.
Getting high on hydra venom had to wait for later, though, as Opia was currently on the job. The local Mercenary Guild had posted a Quest regarding the investigation and cleansing of some sort of degenerative disease in this area. It was just the sort of work the Druid liked to do. She had the fortune of stumbling onto Spittles on her way to the infected site, though taming the bugger came at a cost. The hungry tyke had killed and swallowed Opia’s previous pet, Hubert the basilisk, before her Monster Tamer magic could subdue the hydra. It was a bit of a shame, but the elf wouldn’t lose any sleep over the dead lizard. In the end, it was a vicious monster kept in check by a number of mental shackles that it could potentially break free from. That was why Opia, like most reasonable Tamers, made sure not to get overly attached to her ‘pets.’ If anything, the elf had lucked out. Sure, all that time and effort she spent training Hubert were now irrelevant, but sacrificing the basilisk allowed her to capture a creature that was stronger, tougher, and, in her opinion, cuter. In the Monster Tamer community, this was known as ‘trading up,’ and Opia had gotten the deal of a lifetime.
“Hrrrssss!”
“What is it, boy?”
Spittles suddenly let out a gurgling hiss and lowered its heads warily, prompting Opia to raise her guard. The unseen threat showed itself to be a half-rotten, humanoid corpse which ran out of the thick foliage while screaming its lungs off. Spittles hissed and lunged forward while turning itself to the side. It body-slammed the ghoul with its flank to knock it to the ground then proceeded to stomp it flat under its webbed front feet.
“Oww! Damn, I really need to get you a saddle.”
Opia rose up from the muddy ground while cursing and rubbing her aching butt. Though the hydra hatchling had been kind enough to dispatch the walking corpse, it did so completely on its own. Its sudden movement surprised the Druid, throwing her and her luggage off its back. Such embarrassing things were bound to happen, though, as it was still a fresh capture. It had to be trained over time if it was to become more obedient and mindful towards its master.
“Ugh, undead,” Opia groaned some more. “‘Mysterious disease’ my ass. Should’ve known it was the freaking Blight.”
The elf picked up her backpack and intricately-carved staff off the ground and warily pressed onward with Spittles following behind. Her suspicions were confirmed when the vegetation around her rapidly turned from lush and green to yellow and dry for no apparent reason. It got worse over the next few minutes as the jungle transitioned into a blackened, rotting wasteland with a foul stench permeating the air. Just as that ghoul’s presence suggested, the plague of undeath known as Blight had a heavy presence here. Opia’s Skills and high Endurance were keeping her from suffering any adverse effects, but she knew the symptoms when she saw them. No other disease killed flora and fauna in such an indiscriminate fashion. She then realized Spittles lacked her resistance to the supernatural sickness, so she turned around to pu t a protective Spell on it.
“Air Bubble!”
A sphere of faint, green light enveloped one of the young hydra’s three heads, with the other two gaining their own as soon as the elf repeated the Spell on each of them. Now that its air was actively filtered by magic, Spittles let out some pleased gurgling noises and stomped around a bit in approval. Opia reassuringly patted each of its necks with a smile on her face, then turned her attention back to the problem at hand. Cleaning up a Blight infection by herself was not impossible, though it would take her a while. By her estimate, the infected area would only be about two or three kilometers in diameter. She could easily get rid of the disease in a day or two through constant application of air, water, and soil purification Spells. Her Scourge Inoculation Skill would also make her restorative magic fortify the area against disease, preventing the Blight from reclaiming the cleansed areas. The real problem was that doing so would surely attract the attention of any and all undead in the area, which had to be eliminated anyway if she was to completely extinguish the infection.
Dealing with those was going to be the real challenge, as the undead’s unnatural physiology rendered them immune to most scourge-based incantations, which were Opia’s specialty. Necrotic Wave, Plague Bomb, Searing Toxin, Poisonous Gale, Petrification, and a number of other ominous sounding Spells from the Desolation school of magic would be unusable. The same went for several of the Druid’s active Skills, such as Degenerative Aura and Sapping Grasp. The only incantations she could rely on were caustic ones like Acid Javelin and Corrosive Splash, but they had two shortcomings. They needed time to melt through the undead’s flesh and, more importantly, lacked the physical impact to keep them at bay. That was a task normally reserved for the aforementioned array of sinister Spells. Without them, it was all but guaranteed that the elf would get stuck in melee combat with multiple monsters. This was basically a worst-case scenario for most Casters since they found it hard to chant Spells when someone was ripping out their throat.
Most magic users thus had to rely on trusty companions for cover, and, thankfully for Opia, she had a hydra-sized friend eager to do some corpse-stomping. She’d have basically no control over Spittles and would just have to let it go on a rampage while she supported it from afar. Not ideal, but better than going back to town and recruiting more mercs. That would involve splitting the Quest reward and wasting even more of that expensive bug repellant. Forget making a profit – the elf would be firmly in the red if she did all that. Sure, Spittles had practically no loyalty at the moment and was liable to ignore her if she got flanked, but Opia was confident she could handle herself. She was a Level 83 Druid and Level 42 Monster Tamer, which put her firmly ahead of the adventurer power curve. A Rank Up was well within reach for her, though at present her only concern was the Blighted patch of jungle in front.
While pondering if she could go through with it, the pear-shaped elf looked down at the bracelet on her left wrist. It had the appearance of a golden snake with tiny rubies for eyes, which had wrapped itself around her limb and bitten down on its own tail. It was her good luck charm, which also had the very handy property of tightening itself whenever it sensed its wearer was in danger. Admittedly, it hadn’t done that when that ghoul showed up earlier, but that was because it had accurately judged a single sack of rotting flesh was no threat to her and her new pet. Considering the bracelet hadn’t given her a single warning since she entered the infected area, Opia felt encouraged to try and handle this by herself.
She began scouring the Blight’s perimeter, looking to thin out the undead presence while liberally applying purification magic. She ran into a few groups of zombified monsters and animals – mostly orcs, monkeys, and the occasional feline monstrosity – but they were nothing she and Spittles couldn’t handle. The skirmishing was actually beneficial in training her new pet. Healing its wounds and curing its undead-inflicted afflictions was steadily showing it that Opia was a reliable ally and caretaker, making it more likely the monster would remain a good boy when things turned sour. It actually seemed to be having fun since it was able to get into fights over and over without having to worry about its health. Sure, it had the Regeneration Skill, but that ability rapidly drained its MP, and the monster didn’t have much. Hydras had a shockingly low amount of INT despite their overabundance of heads. It was rare for them to indulge in their violent impulses this much, hence why Spittles was enjoying the undead-cleansing chore. This emotion was conveyed to its tamer through their magical bond, and Opia couldn’t help but get infected by its good mood.
However, the elf’s easy-going attitude disappeared the instant her wrist-mounted early-warning system tightened itself, digging into her skin hard. This timing was pretty bad, as she was still in the middle of melting down the latest pack of undead fodder. To make matters worse, whatever set off her lucky charm was exceptionally big judging by the loud thuds that rapidly grew closer. The elf somehow managed to mop up the stragglers in the next few seconds and turned to escape, but it was already too late. The major threat burst out from some half-rotten foliage behind her. It was an undead hydra, one that had been a fully grown adult before it died and was reanimated. Standing roughly five meters tall with six of its nine heads still intact, it was a much more intimidating sight than Spittles. The youngling admitted that much by letting out an agitated-sounding gurgle and taking a few steps back. It would have already run for the hills if Opia’s meddling wasn’t suppressing the second half of its fight-or-flight instinct.
This was fortunate for the elf, as she was able to climb onto Spittles’s back and grip one of its necks for support before it abandoned her here.
“Go on, then! Run!”
“HRRSSSHHH!”
Spittles didn’t need to hear that instruction to know it needed to dash for its life, but it certainly helped put some spring in its step. It fled in an extremely undignified manner while its older, bigger, and deader ‘uncle’ gave chase while letting out a constant, rumbling growl. It was immediately apparent Spittles wouldn’t win this race. Even though the part-time Monster Tamer’s Logistical Legwork Skill improved her pet’s ability to cross rough terrain, their pursuer’s much-wider stride allowed it to steadily gain on them. It was bound to catch them before long, even without considering the undead’s tireless nature.
Opia desperately racked her brain to figure out a way to save the hatchling, but she couldn’t think of anything. Her pet’s violent movements made chanting magic impossible, as the Druid would surely bite her tongue if she started flapping her gums. She could train it to be more mindful of its passenger to facilitate mounted Spell-slinging, but it was too advanced a feat for a fresh recruit like Spittles. Without her magic, there was no way to affect the outcome of the chase. The most the elf could do was try to leap off its back and use the larger living being as bait, leading the undead abomination away from her in order to save her own skin. It was regrettable she wouldn’t get to keep Spittles, but staying alive was more important than getting high on hydra venom.
The elf was about to make her move when she suddenly saw a person-shaped blur run right past her and Spittles in the opposite direction. She was about to yell at this stranger to get away, but her voice got stuck in her throat when she witnessed what transpired next.
*SCRUNCH*
A single kick.
That was all it took to stop the undead hydra in its tracks. The concentrated impact to its front right leg was so great that the limb turned to dust, forcing the zombie’s enormous torso to slam into the dirt. The colossal creature coiled its many heads back as it prepared to lash out and bite this intruder clean in half, but the mysterious stranger leapt up towards the base of its serpentine necks before it had the chance.
“Flurry of Blows, Savage Sweep.”
With a voice far too quiet for Opia to hear, she unleashed a kick-based Martial Art while in the air. Her right leg was coated in a red light and swung horizontally in a wide arc, cleanly cutting through one of the hydra’s necks as if it were a greatsword. Her entire body continued to spin, allowing her to use both her legs to perform a beautiful six-hit whirlwind kick combo. The hydra was beheaded before her feet even had a chance to touch the ground, but she wasn’t done yet. She angled her body sideways, using the momentum of her revolutions to deliver a guillotine-like chop with her right hand, nearly splitting the creature’s headless body in two as it hit the ground.
