Without further incident for the time being, the journey north continued. The closer to the Northern Capital the party came, the more dismal the conditions seemed to become. Soon they would reach the last towns before a vast swath of swamps and bayous that took up much of Ikesia’s north, a region which gave to the country as much as it took. The so-called Gaullam Labyrinth changed with each passing season, never staying the same and driving those who lived there to become superstitious folk with an uncanny connection to the place. They would need to traverse the newly-flooding region, pass within the immediate vicinity of the occupied Northern Capital, and then cross the Ikes mountains to reach the deterrence fields of Titan’s Bane. However, traversing the Gaullam and reaching the passage to Titan’s Bane was still at least two days’ travel off.

One particular incident came about when the group made camp for the evening some distance from one of the planned stopping points, with Zelsys being recognized at a trading outpost. It was more or less a shanty-town, built around the ruins of a bombed-out fort and named for the number painted on the side of a burned-out First-model Tank Suit that took up the central square: Fort 57. Not wanting to draw too much attention, but still too curious to stay behind, Zelsys was the only one to visit the place, leaving Zefaris and Jorfr to deal with the campsite, maintain the Sturmgandrs, and put Victor to task in training. They wouldn’t have the time or equipment for any truly serious training before they reached Borea, but Zel had something in mind to help sharpen the boy before then.

The proprietor of Fort 57’s ramshackle tent-bar requested her aid in slaying a beast which she’d neither heard nor read about: A mollusk.

“...Like a snail?”

“A snail, yes. A rather fast snail the size of a small house, a snail that spits acid and can’t be harmed by any mundane weapon short of a siege engine or CP-T laced explosives. That’s not the worst part, the big cunts are normally useful livestock, the problem is that this one got parasitized. The parasite makes it go apeshit to try and spread its eggs as far as possible, carried in the snail’s acid spit, and perhaps the worst part is that due to its sheer size it can control humans just fine as an intermediary stage. Goes in through any hole it can find and- Well you get the picture. One weakness besides fire or lightning or what have you, is sight. The parasite shoves itself up in the snail’s eyestalks, stretches ‘em out and uses ‘em like flails, but the snail goes blind. Now, don’t assume that it’s deaf - most snails are deaf, these fuckers hear better than most humans.”

“The contract, show me,” Zel held out a hand. The contract board was just behind the busted-down piece of fort wall that had been repurposed as a counter through the placement of a horizontal board. Skimming the paper, she saw that it only had the absolute bare minimum of information - a sketch of the beast, a few pointers of intel, a somewhat underwhelming payout given how threatening the beast sounded, and a hazard rating. Infuriatingly, the hazard rating was in gemstone rather than anything reasonable like a letter grade or a numbered class: Emerald.

“Emerald hazard rating? How high is that?” she asked, trying to be civil to the man. He confusedly tilted his head at her, emitting a vaguely questioning noise.

Zel slammed the contract down on the counter, knife-handing at the barman to punctuate her words: “E, D, C, B, A, S, what fucking letter grade does Emerald correspond to?!”

He shrunk back in deathly fear, and the eyes of the relatively few patrons affixed themselves to her, but the attention quickly dispersed. It was not a new display, as the barman, too, understood what she was demanding, sighing relief as he dragged himself back to his feet: “Ah, my apologies, you must be from the south; Emerald is equivalent to D+ to C+. Normally I’d recommend you to bring a party and some heavier weapons, maybe drag a cannon or two off of the nearest battlefield, but… Something tells me you can handle a giant snail. Just a hunch.”

“Why the weird rating system?” she raised an eyebrow.

Another sigh. He had clearly had to explain this any times before.

“The viscount of this territory is rather fond of the rank systems which were in place during his youth so he forces everyone to use them, or at least claims that to be the case. Though it uh… Doesn’t really match up with any Pateirian rating systems, and he doesn’t exactly look like any Pateirian I’ve ever seen. That, and he’s… Surprisingly reasonable in matters other than this one. Dyed-in-the-wool transmigrator if you ask me, but don’t go saying I told you so.”

“D+. That was the estimated rating for the infested dungeon, barring the queen and all the other unforeseen hazards…” she thought, considering if it might be a good idea to take Victor along. “But I’d rather not risk it.”

“And I… Don’t look like a transmigrator, then?” she tilted her head, trying everything in her power to make that question non-threatening. The barman flinched back nevertheless.

“No no, of course you don’t! It’s this… Weird look in his eyes, the way he talks, what he talks about. Plenty of people out there just look strange, but there’s an otherworldliness about transmigrators that you can’t mistake, like… I can tell that someone is from far away when they come in, right? I got that impression when the viscount stopped by, but a hundredfold.”

Zel nodded understandingly at the man stumbling over his own words as he tried to explain what she presumed to be a nascent sense for the spiritual. It was called the Second Sight, as she recalled, common enough among normals that a village could be expected to have someone with some degree of it.

“That’s a skill you should develop, reading people must be useful for someone in your profession. As far as the rating goes, which end of that D-C range would you say the big ol’ snail falls towards?”

“C+, easy. The only reason this isn’t a high-priority contract is that we can’t afford the extra fees most slayers would levy; in fact, we’re sort-of at the end of our rope here, shit outta luck. We’d ignored the big bastard for a while, but the snail’s running on dry and the parasite’s getting desperate, so it’s been wandering closer and closer to our walls. We’ve already had to burn a couple parasite-ridden corpses, unless someone gets rid of it we’ll have to abandon this place. Better that than to get melted or eaten from the inside, y’know.”

“Definitely not a good teaching opportunity.”

Still, she was curious, she wanted the money, and plainly just felt like killing a giant snail.

“Alright, where was it last seen? Any known stomping grounds, lair, et cetera?” she sighed resignedly, taking the contract and stuffing it into her pocket.

“Yes, of course. Do you have a map of the area?”

The act of that man marking things out on her map felt familiar, somehow. All too familiar. Like it was some deeply-rooted ritual that superseded her or anyone who had come before her.

“One more thing: Any notable loot to look out for? Parts I might want to avoid damaging? Does it have an Azoth Stone?”

“No on all of the above. They’re completely natural animals, I’m afraid - their acid is a valuable alchemical solvent and many of their organs are similarly valuable, but this particular parasite taints the whole animal. The cost and hazard of cleaning it would far outstrip any value.”

“Bump the reward by ten percent, then. Twenty if I kill the thing today.”

The barman clearly considered haggling, but the prospect of being rid of the beast before the end of the day was something he couldn’t refuse. After staring Zelsys down for a few moments and inevitably folding under the sheer aura of self-assured smugness that radiated from the woman, he conceded: “Fine. Bring in the beak as proof, you’ll know it when you see it.”

She returned to camp, informing the others that she would be back before nightfall and departing on her personal Sturmgandr. With no passengers, there was no reason not to push the steel beast’s Thundercharger as far as it could go, ripping a trail through the already decimated landscape.

Zefaris had half a mind to ask the reason for Zel’s apparent urgency when she returned seemingly in a rush, but the beast-slayer made it obvious enough. So, the blonde’s only question before her lover left was: “What monster is it?”

“Big ol’ snail that spits acid!” said the beast-slayer as she leapt atop the Sturmgandr. With a deep breath, she brought it to life and rode off.

Though Zef thought nothing of it, Victor seemed alarmed. He turned his attention from his target shooting exercise, allowing a Devil’s Tooth to veer off-course and strike the edge of a target log, concern evident in his face. His alarm faded almost instantly and a mutter came out of him: “...It should be fine.”

Raising an eyebrow to him, Jorfr rumbled a question as he tended to the stew currently bubbling over the campfire: “Y’think there’s reason for concern?”

“N-not truly, it’s just that… If this is, indeed, the beast I think it is, the only way it could become violent enough for a bounty to be placed on it is Black Rope. It would be a cause for concern if this wasn’t Zelsys.”

“Black Rope?” Zefaris questioned.

“You ever see those nastly black string parasites that sometimes infest mantises and the like? It’s like that, only big enough to control humans and giant snails. I… Think it’s a feral form of some ancient Ankhezian living weapon, used to destroy livestock of those exact snails due to their production of valuable alchemical solvents.”

The norseman’s face betrayed a consideration of coming after her just in case she needed help.

“The Black Rope shouldn’t be an issue, though the snails’ shells are nearly impervious to magical attack, and that’s where all their organs are… No, I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s a nearly-blind animal, at worst it’ll take her a little while to whittle it down.”

“Alright, back to practice,” Zefaris ordered, clapping her hands to grab Vic’s attention. “Go gather your ammo and try again, this time form the biggest projectile you can. Fire it at that boulder over there.”

As Victor laboured to pull his constructs free and re-absorb them, Zelsys had just entered the nearby woods…

It was a somewhat dense forest, but a quite mundane one, with a dirt road cleared amidst the trees. Her quarry’s trail was the only standout feature, with charred, blackened greenery littering the roadside, the road becoming increasingly muddier as she went on; it was a slick, sticky, stringy mud with a pungent smell, doubtlessly the result of the beast’s slime-trail.

A deserted homestead came into view, the road running through the middle of it. Bare fields to either side, with a large house and some smaller buildings taking up spots next to the road. No snail; only traces of its presence, leading to the largest building: A barn on the far end of the property. Zel got off her motorbike, drawing closer to investigate the site. Something felt off. Dark storm clouds swirled above. The place was deserted, but the atmosphere here wasn’t… Hollow, so to speak. She could imagine people working here yesterday, then just getting up and leaving, whereas both the barman and the contract had made it seem as though the snail had been a known problem for weeks if not months. Making her way towards the main house, she found it to be unlocked. Room after room turned out to be empty and deserted, until she made her way to the bedroom and discovered a tangled mess of limbs and flesh, laying on the bed. It looked almost like a ball of undefinable meat at a glance, wrapped in thick, black tendrils.

“An egg sac of some sort?” she thought, considering how she might best burn it. CP-T was the obvious answer, but a phial of the precious substance felt like a waste for something like this. Its skin was a myriad shades of flesh, from bruised blue, to green, to jaundiced yellow and infected red - it was every colour other than the right ones. It looked stringy and rotten, the parasites clearly not caring how long their secondary vessels lasted. The mass stirred in place, black tentacles erupting from within as the combined gurgling cries of an entire family sounded from it. Five mismatched legs extended from its base. Standing up, it turned to face her, revealing four faces as its many tendrils whipped about and tried to reach for her. She just cut them down and stomped them to the ground, cries of pain issuing from the abomination’s two childlike faces. The third, vaguely female-looking face, was inanimate, while, most disturbingly, the male face appeared lucid. His eyes were bloodshot and his expression that of utmost torment, but he spoke. This scrap of humanity was the only plausible explanation for why it hadn’t attacked her yet.

He looked up at her and spoke, and the voices of the entire family came together to form a terrible voice. There was no tangible emotion in it, the humanity was nearly gone - just the broken scraps of a being that had once been human, now relieved by the promise of death.

“At last. There is alkahest in the basement. Melt us, or burn us. It is the only way. Hurry. I inured myself to the parasite, but I am only one body out of four.”

In the time it took the amalgamated family to say that, Zelsys had cut down at least seven Black Rope tendrils that had tried to reach for her. A small pile of clippings laid in the doorway, in a pool of juices and twitching, nascent parasites the length and thickness of horse hairs.

“And the snail?” she questioned, if only to confirm her suspicions.

“In the barn. Four more people. Grandparents. The-”

Suddenly, the Wife’s face came alive and the Husband fell silent as she wheeze-yelled: “FEED US OR KILL US, MORSEL. DO NOT WASTE TIME WITH TALK.”

It was at that moment that several tendrils spiraled together and lashed out at her, smashing part of the doorframe after she’d stepped out of the way. She baited another strike, only to grab the composite tendril with her left hand and cut it off as closely to the main mass as possible. The Wife’s cries of pain resounded in Zel’s ears as she left the room to check the basement.