DAY 51 10:00

I had barely been able to sleep last night, my anticipation about today being too strong. Sure enough, right on schedule, my headache started up. Much less severe now that I had an idea of what it was.

Big red letters burned their way across my mind. “SERVER MAINTENANCE SCHEDULED IN TWO HOURS.”

Had my previous headaches been information that I hadn’t been able to process at the time?

I had a plan for today, an experiment to try during the rollback, because I wasn’t sure if it would backfire on me. I hadn’t touched Mentalism yet, out of fear that it would weaken me to the influence of the Old Ones. Now was the time to get over the fears.

Abe and Shrya were both still asleep, but I would wake them up shortly. For the moment I was sitting outside, watching the clouds, and thinking. The hope I had been holding out that a shiny golden moderator would descend from the heavens and take me home was gone. They’d had a whole month since the last patch, if anyone had been looking, or noticed, they would have come to look. Or I’d just vanish. My fear of the Old Ones was reduced, I had confronted them, and stolen an ally out from their grasp. They weren’t all powerful, I could fight them. Abe still had my ring, I wanted him to have time to fully recover. I knew he was tender about his lost hand and foot, and they were having a significant impact on his self esteem. Up until now he had been an unstoppable brute, and now he needed a crutch to walk, and had lost his spear arm. I wasn’t going to abandon him though. This was my fault. Hadn't I told them about the worms? How could I have forgotten again?

It seemed like there was magic that could regrow his limbs, he had seen the witches do it for others. They were dead now, and I doubted the angry priest in Wolsey would be willing to send a miracle our way.

I had a stick in front of me, carved down into a wand. It was a recipe I hadn’t used before, but it would theoretically empower spells. Mentalism had two subskills unlocked.

Open Mind

(Spell, Channelling, Divination),

Mana Cost: 5 per second,

Cast Time: 0.75 seconds,

Range: 100 meters

Critical Chance: 2%.

Detect the presence and approximate location of intelligent minds within range and become receptive to Mentalism. Critical cast provides basic insight about the nature of the minds sensed.

Schism

(Spell, Attack, Duration),

Mana Cost: 25,

Cast Time: 0.75 seconds,

Range: 30 meters,

Critical Chance: 8%.

Inflict mental unease upon the target, causing sensory hallucinations. Target suffers -25% to Agility and Perception and Intellect for 30 seconds. Critical cast doubles intensity of debuff.

The plan was to try to use Open Mind in the moments before the server maintenance, between the save point and the rollback. It might not work at all, but I was hoping that if it was an invitation for the Old Ones to eat my mind, the rollback would save me.

Mentally steeling myself, I went into the house and woke the two of them up, asking them to keep an eye on me in case something unexpected happened.

Red text appeared across my vision, and a shiver went through my mind.

UPDATE 213.0.14 COMING IN 5 MINUTES. SERVER STATE WILL BE SAVED IN 4 MINUTES. YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO HOME BUT YOU CAN’T STAY HERE. EXPECTED 30 MINUTE DOWNTIME. CHANGES INCLUDE REDUCING VOID SHARD SPAWN RATES AND ERRANT SPAWN POINTS, YOU HAD YOUR FUN WITH EASY HUNTS. ABILITY TO COLLECT BOUNTY ON YOURSELF WILL NOT BE REMOVED BECAUSE IT’S NOT A BUG, BUT YOU SHOULD GET HELP. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

It was...not what I expected. Who the hell was writing that? Whatever. I sat down and...thought really hard. How exactly was I supposed to even use this? After three minutes of making various expressions of intense concentration and profound enlightenment I decided to cheat and opened the menu, casting the spell that way.

Awareness blossomed as my mind opened. The sensation made me shiver, but somehow I could feel the presence of Shrya and Abe in a new way. They shimmered with invisible light, Shrya brightest.

This sixth sense expanded slowly, sweeping through the trees and picking up another cluster of minds. Dimmer, less developed. Three things in a small cave, maybe goblins or smart animals. I could only vaguely sense their direction and distance. Not close, but also not at the edge of my range.

I dismissed the spell and it faded away, and with it the supernatural sense of awareness.

“It worked?” I rubbed my eyes.

It had been easy, with not so much as a whisper from the Old Ones. Maybe too easy. Sure it hadn’t really told me anything that five minutes of searching and my nose couldn’t, but it had also been immediately useful information, at the cost of some mana and maybe a developing headache. Surely the blue tribe had witches on their own doing similar spells.

More red text appeared, but without the expected freezing of the world. Things kept moving, though there was hardly any wind. I kept an eye on Shrya, but she was poking at the alchemy kit now.

UPDATE 213.0.14 COMING IN 1 MINUTE. DISCONNECT THEM IF YOU GOT THEM. 9 OUT OF 10 DENTISTS RECOMMEND GOING FOR A WALK AND DOING SOME STRETCHES. DRINK SOME WATER. JUST KIDDING, THIS IS AN UPDATE AND WATER WON’T HELP.

I counted down, a wince stretched out in anticipation of soul rending agony as my consciousness was ripped out of my body. I reached zero, and then waited some more. Had I counted fast? The time in the corner of my vision agreed with me, it had been more than a minute now.

“Uh, do either of you feel different?”

Shrya and Abe were both staring at me, shrugging, so I scrutinized the sky. Things still seemed to be moving. Maybe the Follower status somehow changed things. I went to open the menu and it looked normal, though the giant red letters floating in my vision were still there, floating on top of everything, under my eyelids.

“Okay, do the thing? My body is ready?”

The moment stretched on, and on. Anxious tension turned into boredom. I dug a finger in my ear, scraping out some earwax. Then I got up and walked around for a bit, inspecting my baskets for changes. Then I poked at a tree for a bit and pulled a leaf off a bush. Through it all the damned box of text blocked the center of my vision, I felt like a crab, scuttling around diagonally.

“Take us to your leaders!” I shouted at the sky, “I demand a manager. The regional manager! The chief executive manager!!”

That got no result, and I didn’t know what to do. I could hardly read while text blocked my vision, and after thirty minutes had gone by without change I decided to take a nap.

Five and a half hours later the text unceremoniously vanished, and the surprise of it made me drop a bowl of stew I was eating.

“That was not thirty minutes!” I screamed.

After cleaning up I sat in meditation pose to review my menus for any changes. Mentalism had made a bit of progress to 8% of the way to rank 2. Maybe the Schism debuff would be more useful, but I figured in most cases an arrow would accomplish more for me, or saving my mana for rage. Looks like Abe would be waiting a long time for me to magic up some new limbs for him.

“Oh come on!” The rollback or reset or whatever hadn’t happened this time. Looks like it was lucky that Mentalism hadn’t let my brain get scooped out.

When my mana was refreshed, I went back out to the forge. Theorizing, I tried to put together a plan for creating a prosthetic foot, so he could at least walk without a crutch. The plan came together, combining wood and leather, but it would be achievable.

I started grabbing materials, and while doing so decided it would need some reinforcement. Wood might not withstand his strength, so I looked for a stronger design. It would pretty much deplete my stock of iron, but I could do it. With my knife I carved out the wood, stitched some hide, and then fired up the forge to shape the metal. It felt like a bit of a waste to use the fuel for just one item, but this way Abe would at least be able to walk with me back to the hill for more.

When it was ready, the parts melded together, becoming an oak boot with a strip of iron running up the front and leather supports that would lace up the sides. Supposedly this would reduce his agility penalty by half, to -12.5%. I set it aside for the moment, thinking. Had prosthetic feet already been a part of this system, or was it letting me use the unfair advantage of automatic crafting now that I had higher skills? I tried to press two sticks together, imagining them combining to become one long stick, and nothing happened. Maybe wooden feet had already existed.

Was it even worth mining more ore and bringing it back here? With the tribe effectively wiped out, there was nothing stopping the Blues from just walking right up. Why not just take what we could and set out? Take advantage of the momentary lull and get to the hills before blue patrols swarmed us.

Damn it. I had just gotten this place somewhat defensible. Now our choices were to stay here and potentially get surrounded, or abandon it. I doubted the Old Ones had corrupted the blue tribe the same way and convinced them to all each other and die. That would be far too convenient. It was a possibility though, and the more likely outcome was a swarm of insane, rabid, goblins all around us.

I opened the skill menu and scrolled through it several times, hoping something would catch my eye and help make a decision. I could make more traps, many of them didn’t need metal for the basic and weak version. Or I could make some camouflage to disguise the walls as clusters of trees, but that would do nothing for the smell. The smell was the main thing. They could sniff out snares, and a disguise wouldn’t fool their nose. We needed something potent enough to overpower our own scent, but without being so distinguishable that they could follow it right to us. It needed to be something common in the forest, and uninteresting enough that a patrol wouldn’t want to follow it.

I hadn’t seen any skunks here. They might not even exist for all I knew. Decay was a strong scent, and common now that widespread skirmishing was ongoing. However dead things didn’t tend to move around much, so that could be a giveaway. Plus I didn’t want to smear rotting guts everywhere, because then I’d have to smell it too.

The list of alchemy recipes whizzed by in front of me as I scrolled back and forth a few times before slowing down. I could collect pine sap and distill it down to its essence, which could make pine scented sticky glue, or soap with a more complicated recipe. All the components were reasonably common. That would be better than nothing, smelling pine fresh could work. Maybe one of the others would have an idea.

I left the forge to go collect some pine sap and find something to eat, preferably with some fat. Maybe an epiphany would strike.

About an hour later I returned with several skins full of pine sap, several skinned rabbits, and a plump wild boar. No bright ideas had occurred, but as I put the boar up on the table I saw something that made me stop. For a long minute I closed my eyes and tried to will myself out of existence, and when that didn’t work I grabbed the prosthetic foot that had slipped my mind and brought it inside the cabin. Shrya was brewing something truly foul, and Abe was practicing his jab in the air with a spear while leaning against the wall for support. They were both strongly nocturnal, Abe at least could tolerate the brightness of sunlight, but Shrya showed no signs of getting used to it.

“Hey, gang. I brought presents.” I dropped the rabbits and skins on the table, and then took the foot over to Abe.

“What is that?” He dropped the spear and took the foot, sniffing it.

“New foot. Try it on.” Thankfully, as soon as I guided him into pressing it against his leg it fit itself on. Gotta love one size fits all item equipping, even though regular boots wouldn’t fit onto goblin feet. I motioned for him to try walking, and he wobbled across the room. Very quickly he adapted to it, doing laps and swinging his spear wildly until Shrya hissed and swiped at him, chasing him outside. We could hear his barking laughter through the walls as he thrashed the tree branches.

“More poison?” I looked closer at the grey sludge with black veins running through it. Whatever she had done to the recipe had doubled the shelf life of it and it would last for 52 hours even in the crappy rabbit skins. In addition to rotting you from the inside out, it would also blur your eyes and inflict -25% visual Perception for five minutes. She was getting devilishly good at this. I hadn’t seen any mention of affinity in the racial traits, so maybe it was just dedication. She was stuck in the house until the sun went down every day.

“Better poison. Why sap? Make firebomb?”

“Uhh...soap? Can you make firebombs? That wasn’t in the book.”

“Sap, mix with grease, charcoal, and flint.”

“You came up with that on your own? Are you smarter than me?”

“Yes.” She turned back to the poison, dumping the sludge into the calcinator and tapping the glass a few times. ‘Why soap?”

“I’m hoping it will make us harder to track by scent. With the tribe gone it’s not safe to stay here alone. If we leave soon we should be able to get through the forest before the blues notice.”

“Maybe help. Little bit. River flows to hills.”

“That’s a good idea.” Floating down the river would be slower than going overland, but it did loop back towards the hills on the other side of the caves.

Doublechecking the crafting list to be sure, I saw that a wooden raft was indeed an option I had been been granted. So I wouldn’t have to make one the old fashioned way.

“Well, I’m thinking we should leave as soon as we can, unless you have a reason to stay.”

“Soap first. Then go.” She emptied the poison into a pouch. It had become much thicker and darker, like molasses, and the smell made me want to shove sap into my nose. Then she grabbed the sap and dumped it into the pot. Hurrah for this being the part where cross contamination didn’t matter.

While she was processing the sap, I gathered up the things I wanted to bring and loaded them onto the cart. Abe was anxious to leave, clearly not used to spending so long in one place, but I talked him into scrubbing himself with the soap, which removed the white paint from his skin as well as making him pine scented. I loaded the alchemy kit on last, and then we locked the door and gate and headed for the river.

Now that the sun was down Shrya raced ahead, vanishing into the bushes to hunt. Abe walked next to me.

“How’s the foot working?”

“Good. Sore. Toe itchy.” He nudged the wooden foot with the butt of his spear.

“I might be able to make a hand soon, but they’re more complicated. Hopefully we’ll be able to find a healer or witch who knows the right spell.”

“Witches cursed Grob. Made him hungry.”

“I don’t think the witches were in control when that happened. The Old Ones got inside their heads, same as they tried with you with those worms.”

“How ring make whispers stop?”

“It hides you from them. They won’t know where to look for you. You should keep wearing it for now.”

He hesitated as the wind shifted, sniffing, and then I did as well. The scent of Goblins ahead was carried to us on the breeze. A moment later came a shrill scream, and barking voices. I dropped the cart, grabbing my bow and running. I could replace this stuff, I couldn’t replace Shrya. Abe crashed into the bushes next to me.

We ran between the trees, and seeing a swirl of blue paint I loosed an arrow without slowing, catching the goblin in the arm. Abe charged, impaling it and forcing it back, onto a path with several others. Two were already down, foaming and twitching from the poison, another swung his club wildly at hallucinations as he fell over. Four more were still up, surrounding Shrya, though the front one was momentarily stunned from having a corpse rammed into it. I put an arrow into his chest, and then the other three rushed me. A dart flew out of the bushes, missing them and nearly hitting me

“No darts!” I screamed as the three piled onto me, chewing on my bracer as I shoved it into their faces, and they clubbed any part of me they could reach. Abe impaled another, sending it to crash into a tree, and I drew my knife and stabbed another in the face. Shrya leaped off a branch to bite through the neck of the last one.

I rolled to my feet, grabbing the dart, which had a glob of poison on the tip and had nearly hit me.

“What happened?” I asked, shaking the dart. Shrya quickly took it back and tucked it into her belt.

“Only heard three. “ She poked at a slash on her sleeve.

“Maybe don’t try to take on three by yourself next time. You could have been killed. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” She Veiled herself and ran into the bushes. I looked over to check on Abe, he was chewing on a severed leg. He was fine.

“Come on.’ I retrieved my arrows and headed back to the cart.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully. I had parked the cart beside the river and started constructing the raft. It was almost ready, just needing the sinew that Shrya had gone to chase down.

“Have you gone south to where the giants live before?”

“Once. It ate Gronk so we left. Very big. Very angry.”

“Well, I’m hoping we can avoid fighting them if we don’t have to.”

“I’m a little bigger now. Little more angry.”

“I’m sure you’ll kill a giant some day, buddy.”

“Gonna eat it. Get huge.”

Just then Shrya emerged from the woods carrying a sack full of sinew and skins and meat. I took it, and finished off the raft.

“Okay, lets get this loaded up. Then we can figure out if we want to keep floating while someone keeps watch, or if we want to stop somewhere in the morning.”

When it was empty Abe and I stashed the cart in a clump of bushes. Maybe it’d still be here when we got back. We pushed off and jumped on, I kept my bow in my lap, arrow nocked and ready to draw.

My vigilance lasted about an hour, and then I was just laying on my back looking up at the stars.

“I used to go rafting in the summer. Back home. It was pretty similar to this, a big loop in the river. It was nice to get away.”

“What chase you?” Abe was using his spear to idly poke the water behind us.

“Not that kind of get away. Life, I guess. Bills. It feels so stupid now to have been afraid all the time. It’s not like I’d have died, nothing was going to eat me, but at the time every decision felt so big. I just ended up not really doing anything. So worried about doing the wrong thing that I never did anything worthwhile.” The claws of one hand dug into the meat of my other.

“Well, maybe not anything. I had a career that I thought I was good at, hobbies, friends. I tried things, I did stuff. Maybe not very often, but I did--” Shrya reached back and stuck a hand over my mouth, a claw going up my nose, pointing to the forest with her other.

Very faintly, drums beat out a marching tempo. Nothing was in sight, I figured they were at least a kilometer away. We were entering a section with raised banks on the western side. If any patrols came this way we would be stuck without the option of retreating into the human lands.

Just to be safe, I grabbed my arrows again and got them ready on the deck beside my bow. We drifted in silence. The drums were getting fainter, or was I just imagining that?

“Talk.” Shrya nudged me.

“Oh, I don’t know what I was trying to say. It’s not important anymore. It was about before I met you two, while I was up there or whatever.” I gestured vaguely at the sky. A perfect circle of five stars was racing to the south, shimmering and pulsing until they vanished over the horizon. Satellites? It distracted me for a second.

“Before all this. It felt so hard, until it started feeling so unimportant. I’ve done so many things wrong and wasted so much time and it feels like it was all just a big joke that wasn’t even funny. I spent my whole life looking for a fantasy, and now that I have it, I can’t stop remembering every opportunity I missed before and that’s ruining things now. I’m never going back, am I? I don’t know if I can, or even want to.”

None of us had an answer for that so I told them to try to get some sleep while I took the first watch, and Abe could take second watch. When the sun cracked the horizon Shrya disappeared under the tarp we’d taken from the cart. I just stared off into the sky until the sunlight hurt my eyes as much as what I felt in the back of my mind.