Machine Mage: An Isekai LitRPG, page 30
The path we walked had soil and leaf litter at the bottom, along with squishy sand and gravel—a fine place to put down roots—but the brush had chosen to live life on hard-mode. They grew literally from the side of the mountain, clinging to the rock, roots spreading wide over the stone and forming intricate nets that intertwined with their neighbors and covered the stone surface of the land for as far as the eye could see. Those that had found cracks and crevasses to grow next to, clung to them with thick, hooked protrusions that probably did the lion’s share of anchoring themselves and their neighbors so the whole thing couldn’t come sliding down.
It wasn’t just a few of these shrubs, either. They were everywhere, and they grew over the face of the mountain like white whiskers. Their pale bark paired with black leaves to make it seem like someone had come along and switched the world’s visual settings to monochrome, then lowered the brightness by half.
The Ralqir natives seemed to take the midday gloominess as a good sign, however. These trees were supposedly deciduous, and their leaves tended to thin this time of year, but we were lucky enough to be experiencing a warm fall. Less light meant more cover, and that was always what you wanted.
By midday, the pass turned into a slow, steady trod. The ground became saturated with moisture, slippery, the sand and gravel no longer allowing our feet to grip properly as we climbed. My legs burned, even with my supernatural durability, and others, by the look of them, were feeling the same.
Geddon had it the hardest. Sometime during the day, the walls narrowed or our path lowered until the big guy had to turn to the side to fit his shoulders within their confines, and our easy view of the slope was no more. The big Leori growled and grumbled the whole time, having to shimmy up the mountain turned sideways to fit in the cramped space, alternating between which was his lead foot.
We were no longer at the bottom of a V but in a trench ten-feet deep with sheer sides, and the floor was split, at times, revealing deep cracks going down into nothing. The debris we accidentally kicked into the gaps made noise for long seconds as the pebbles rolled and clacked off the flowing surfaces until they got too quiet to hear anymore. Annoyingly, the cracks weren’t quite wide enough to fit a leg, but they certainly were wide enough to twist your ankle if you weren’t paying attention.
Our breaths steamed in the cold now that we’d gotten to a sufficient altitude, and those that had abandoned their wet clothes were doubly grateful to have made themselves dry before the climb—not that they stayed dry for long.
The first peal of thunder cracked overhead, close. Everyone, without exception, froze and looked up in budding horror.
“We must hurry!” Tiba shouted from the lead of the group. No one else understood her, but they didn’t have to. Everyone knew a storm was bad news.
The first drop of rain pinged off my prosthetic hand shortly thereafter, and it only got worse from there.
As far as I could tell, this was a light-to-middling shower up here in the mountains. Just clouds from the north running headfirst into the mountain range and dropping their load as they flowed over, as Tiba had predicted. Unfortunately for us, we were in a natural pass that drained the majority of the water from two separate mountainsides. While the gentle patter of raindrops on the black canopy could be heard overhead, what we were quickly subjected to was a deluge.
Gallons of runoff sluiced down from the slopes overhead to fall onto our heads in steady, cold streams. The rest of the mountain may have been getting a light smattering of water, but we got everything—a torrent of freezing cold dumped on our heads courtesy of physics, soaking us to the bone and chilling us to our cores. It battered us, beat us down, and made our bodies heavy, our footing so slippery that our pace slowed to a tenuous crawl, made worse by having to now carry the shorter folk on our shoulders, thanks to our trail disappearing to be replaced by a rushing river of muddy, glacial runoff.
This is where being heavy and dense actually worked in my favor. As the water levels rose, my boots remained firmly on the ground, slippery as it was, more so than my friends’, and eventually, I was at the head of the group, a rope tied around my waist and Tiba straddling my shoulders like a kid at a parade as I climbed, gritting my teeth with every grinding step upwards.
“We must get to the top soon, Ryan, or it goes badly for us!” Tiba shouted above the rushing noise.
“So I gathered!” I replied, a sudden gush of water slapping against my sternum, peppering my skin with the hundreds of little pebbles it had brought with it from farther up the mountain.
“How far?!” I asked.
“I’m not sure! It looks different like this!”
Climbing is now Level 9.
“Do we need to go back?” I asked as I took another heavy, laborious step.
The goblin queen’s legs tensed on my shoulders, gripping tightly as if I were a mount that might bolt at a bad time.
“We can’t!” she replied. “It is probably worse farther down the mountain!”
That just meant I had to buckle down.
The pressure on the rope steadily grew, and the knot dug painfully into my waist. Someone back there was struggling badly, and I desperately hoped it wasn’t Geddon. Having to pull the big guy up the mountain would have been—
Climbing is now Level 10.
Upgrade paths available:
Anchor
Create Handhold
Reinforced Musculature
Well, there was a bright side to it all, I guessed. If one of these could help me, I’d gladly pick it now if it meant we could get to the top before someone drowned or turned the pass into the multiverse’s most ill-made waterslide.
Anchor: Any force exerted upon you while climbing is reduced by 20%.
Create Handhold: Affix an object you possess to any surface. The adhering of this object requires an investment of mana, while maintaining the bond requires significantly less (variable).
Reinforced Musculature: Your Body score is amplified by 10% while climbing. This bonus is lost after 1 minute of rest or a 1-minute period of using only your feet to move through geographical space.
Anchor. One-hundred percent Anchor.
Create Handhold was another one of those things I could have fun with, magically gluing things to other things, but I could probably mimic the function well enough with prep time, training, and equipment.
Reinforced musculature was a straight 10 percent Body gain while I climbed, which would be huge if I kept getting more Body points from my achievements. Plus, it seemed like I could exploit the loose wording a bit to keep the buff if I was in a situation where I was using my hands and feet to traverse terrain.
However, Anchor had the benefit of being impossible. Any force exerted upon me was reduced? Attacks? Physical? Magical? Metaphorical? It didn’t say.
Yes, please. Take a seat, Fundamental Laws of the Universe, I’m climbing here.
I chose it before I could second-guess myself. Instantly, I felt lighter, the force of the rushing water less oppressive, and the rope around my waist stopped digging into my abdomen so deeply. The effect was so sudden and pronounced that—
“Are you okay, Ryan?” Tiba asked, sweeping my hair out of my face to put her hand on my forehead, checking for fever.
“No. I—”
My stomach spasmed, and I doubled over, losing what little lunch I’d had earlier in the day along with a good amount of water.
“Ryan?!”
I had the presence of mind to keep my grip on the rock, but I let go with my weaker hand to give the goblin queen a thumbs-up in between eruptions of vomit. Apparently, gravity was also a force being exerted upon my body as I climbed, and suddenly changing that constant came with consequences.
Once the nausea passed, I shook my head vigorously and was back to climbing—one foot in front of the other, arms outstretched, prosthetic fingers digging into rock.
What must have been hours later, my angle of ascent suddenly changed, and, without warning, my foot touched ground that had leveled out significantly—not entirely, but enough that it felt like flat ground.
I nearly tripped, reaching out for handholds that were no longer there. The sheer walls of the wash were suddenly gone as if I’d entered a room through a doorway, and I was in a miniature forest of pale trunks and black leaves, the lowest of which were maybe a head or two above my own. The water was about shin-high here: a standing, black puddle as opposed to the river I’d just left.
The look of the place was otherworldly, the clouds making the light diffuse before it even hit the trees, casting the world in a strange, eclipse-like gloom.
I let Tiba down gently into the water and started hauling the others up. I felt gravity reassert itself fully now that I wasn’t climbing anymore, forcing my stomach to adjust again, but it wasn’t nearly so rough going back to normal as it was the other way around. The pull was harder without the assistance, but that was okay. I was upright and anchored enough.
Everyone, without exception, was exhausted when they took my hand for me to help them to the top, Beedy especially. When I hauled him up, grabbing his forearm to get him to his feet, he sagged right back down again into the standing water. Grabbing him by the collar, I heaved him until I could look at his face.
Not good.
His skin was like ice, pale and bloodless, and his lips were an unhealthy shade of blue.
Not good at all.
“Tiba!” I shouted.
“I know! We take shelter near here! Come!”
The dragon sisters seemed to be doing the best out of everyone, with the exception of myself and (surprisingly) Bole, but I was supernaturally durable. So the pair of dragon women got under either of Beedy’s arms to help him along as we followed Tiba further into the pass.
She led us through the twilight forest of scrub, to our left, through the trees, and up another slope, but only enough to get us out of the standing water, then to a boulder behind which was a rocky overhang that jutted out of the mountainside to form a curved roof of sorts—shallow but long like the gutter on a colossal house, big enough for us to stop and get out of the rain and comfortably so.
Evidence of fire, soot stains, charcoal scratches on the walls, and black discoloration on the rock overhead indicated that this place had been used as a way station many times before by parties unknown.
We all piled through the gap behind the boulder and into the shelter. Everyone was eager to get out of the elements. Beedy was nearly asleep on his feet, and everyone but me was shivering to the point that I could hear their teeth chattering from ten feet away.
It was down to me to make the fire. Thankfully, my Spatial Storage was much drier than I was.
I chose the spot in the shelter that was already black from previous fires, sandwiched between the back wall and the surface of the boulder that hid the place from view.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to start the fire from scratch. No flint and steel required. I simply got one of my oil-soaked logs out of my Storage and piled more of my stock on top. Then I dropped a tiny nail I Automated to State Change into liquid once it left my hand. The results were instantaneous. The log with the oil sparked to life with a FWOOSH! and the rest of the wood was ablaze in seconds, to the relief of everyone nearby.
Sissa and Samila practically shoved Beedy into the flames, getting him so close I was afraid his hair was going to catch fire. Then they set about stripping off his leather armor and every bit of clothing he could spare. After that, they huddled close on either side of him to transfer body heat. He didn’t have the strength to argue—not that he would have regardless, since he was Beedy.
Everyone else followed suit, shivering and gathering around the fire. The concave shape of the overhang combined with the flat part of the boulder seemed to trap the heat pretty well, and soon everyone was looking better.
With everyone else sorted, I—the only one of us who didn’t seem to be affected by the cold—took care of security in the only way I knew how. Trix seemed sad to give up the compass, but he was too busy getting warm to really put up a fight.
The indicator wobbled in its housing, pointing west and southwest, tapping my wrist every couple of seconds or so. The Scourge were out there—maybe not on the mountainside with us but perhaps down below.
Since we were putting down roots for the night, I figured I would as well. Two gun turrets on either side of the flat boulder would keep watch for us while we slept. They were set up for line of sight, so tracking and killing things through the trees was going to be a challenge, but they’d at least make noise if they saw something hostile.
As I got the second turret anchored and loaded, a violent shudder passed through me. Then I heard something loud, deep, and hollow, the kind of sound you could feel in your insides as much as you heard it with your ears.
I’d felt an explosion once when I was a kid. A Colony hauler had veered off-course upon reentry and crashed on a mountain in the Outers, the ship’s holds full of promegel that had been processed in orbit. The crash site was far over the horizon from me, but when the holds detonated, the entire world for miles and miles felt it in their chests. It was a force that penetrated skin and bone and rattled everything in you that was soft and vulnerable.
This sound felt like that—a terrible projection of force with disruptive tones too deep to be fully appreciated by a mere human. Only this was long and drawn-out. Emotional. Alive.
Little rocks tumbled down the mountain and landed with a splash in the standing water at my feet.
My lizard brain—the part of me that remembered a time when humanity was not the apex predator of their planet—told me I needed to run, needed to hide, and needed to be quiet. It told me that this was no mere explosion or volcanic eruption that just required caution. It insisted that this impossible sound came from a living thing, and it was pissed.
I froze, my head swiveling to pinpoint the direction from which the sound came, and I listened.
CRACK!
It was like a branch snapping under a boot, except far larger, followed seconds later by a thunderous CRASH! that reverberated inside of me and brought to mind old myths of Titans that flattened the Earth where they chose to set their feet.
Electric tingling crawled up from my toes to the tip of my scalp. That’s when I felt something notice me.
I couldn’t tell what, where it was, how far away, or what its intentions were, but it noticed me. My new Stealth upgrade screamed from wherever my Skills lived.
Alert: Your presence has been detected!
Alert: Your presence has been detected!
Alert: Your presence has been detected!
Alert: Your presence has been detected!
The alerts scrolled through my feed, one after the other in a long series of heart-stopping declarations. My feet felt anchored to the ground, and my muscles refused to do more than stay very, very still.
“He still does the big magic for us,” Tiba whispered timidly.
Breathing in sharply as the spell over me dissipated, I spun on my feet and looked down to find the goblin queen right next to me, leaning on her spear tiredly, her head slightly bowed and an arm folded protectively over her stomach.
I turned back to where I’d heard the noise, but …
Whatever it was wasn’t there anymore. It had either gone without a sound or was no longer paying attention to me. Somehow, I knew it.
“Tiba?” I asked, not fully understanding. “What the hell was that?”
“Kuul,” she answered. Her teeth chattered in the cold, and her hand went pale as she gripped her spear with all her might.
“You can’t mean—Wait …” I choked on the words, remembering. “That was Kuul?”
Kuul, the old Stone Heart chief who had enslaved me and forced me to make things for him when I’d first arrived on this planet … I’d assumed he was dead. At least, I’d hoped he was dead. Last time I’d seen him he’d been running away from the Baned after murdering Hunty. My friend. Tiba’s lover.
When I’d found the Stone Hearts on the way to Eclipse afterward, and he wasn’t with them, I’d just …
“Yes.” Tiba’s voice was quiet now, so quiet I could barely hear her over the rain.
“That can’t be right,” I argued. “How do you know? That was—”
Huge.
“He does the big magic for us,” Tiba repeated. “I can feel it … down there.” She nodded in the direction we were traveling, presumably down the mountain and in the valley where I had entered this universe.
That’s the tutorial area. What’s he doing in the tutorial area?
“That was Kuul?! Short, green, old, frail, hates me? That Kuul?” I snapped, feeling my volume rise without my consent. “How was that Kuul?!”
“He does big magic to kill many of the Baned, as we are chased, before I am chief. He goes deep into the mountain where the stories are made and does big magic.”
“What are you saying? When the Baned invaded the caves, Kuul … what? Cast some kind of spell that summoned that?”
Tiba shook her head sadly. “No. That is Kuul, what he is now. I can still feel the chief in him … the uh … position. He burns it. He is burning.”
A shiver passed through me, my body choosing that moment to finally experience the cold.
“Last time Kuul and I met, he wanted me dead,” I remembered.
And he was just a goblin back then. What is he now that he sounds like that?
Tiba bowed her head even lower, sliding her free hand nervously over bare skin. “He burns. I feel it now like a hot iron on my face,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“He burns,” she repeated, her eyes un-focusing, staring through the trees and into the valley.
“Tiba …” I gulped. “When we get down there, will Kuul—I don’t know … Will he help us or—”
Tiba looked at me with uncertainty and more than a little fear, but she didn’t answer.
Wonderful.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
