Blood lust

When he'd dry cleaned his clothes and the wolf pelt he'd used as a towel after his bath he finally felt truly human again and prepared his gear to head out.

"First though"

He headed to the store and spent 5 silver to buy an Iron tipped spear; it was clearly higher quality wood and tempered for strength, the tip shone and gave him some reassurance that he was at least as advanced as the skeletons he'd fought.

The quests were to the south west of his base, the river doubtless the one he had hunted the crackbills in, if he could pick up another few of them he would as he was running low on duck breast now and had been saving it for a change of pace. He had been pleasantly surprised when he arrived back in this world to find the food unspoiled and unchanging in the Colony inventory but didn't want to have to resort to the rat meat no matter how fresh it was.

"The honey would go well on the duck legs too"

He ran with more vigour with this thought in his heart and soon arrived at the first quest marker, the Clear the River quest.

He was confused by what he saw.

"I get 300 exp for this"

The river was blocked but it wasn't exactly flooding, the banks were high and the continual morning rain was not helping matters but it was only a beaver dam, this seemed like a natural occurrence so why the world or whatever exchanged mana for his services would want it gone was beyond him.

It was of sturdy enough construction but the few entrances he could see showed the beavers must be a normal size.

Deeply suspicious he moved forward and used a now less valued stone spear to poke the dam.

Nothing happened.

It was obviously too wet to burn so flame was out, he tried dislodging it from the bank with his spear and then his wooden sword but simply couldn't get the angle, a solid hit from his sword with his not inconsiderable strength didn't seem to do anything to it or gain any response but ripples. In the end it was clear to him he'd have to wade in.

"This is going to be bad isn't it?"

He withdrew his axe and wadded in downstream, the water was not nearly as clear as last time he was at the river and the rain disturbed mud swirled as he wadded. He got to within a metre of the dam before he saw the first quick ripple and then they were everywhere, shooting out of the damn side and pulling themselves over the top from the other side.

They were most certainly beavers but with beady yellow eyes and mouths full of teeth the same length as the front two, sharp and exposed in their wide open jaws.

"Bloody hell!"

He hit the first one as it shot out of the water towards his face as he ran backwards in an effort to keep them from circling around him. Then he felt the first set of teeth dig into his ankle and then another on the same leg, more were shooting towards him and any above the water were making a continuous chirruping noise as though desperately eager for this new prey.

He looked to the cloudy water as he pushed backwards and could see nothing through the murk. As his hand touched the bank he vaulted up the side using the same high strength and agility that allowed him to hit the first of the beasts out of the air. As soon as he was out of the water he saw 4 of these carnivorous beavers latched onto his flesh, grinding their jaws alternatively as though trying to saw the meat off in chunks.

He stabbed each quickly, and once they were dead continued backing up, levelling his spear with both hands and dropping his axe on the grass. He backed up, his eyes darting to each of the visible beasts and the undisguised ripples as others moved into position, blood was pouring down his legs and he could feel their increasing weakness.

"The blood thirsty little devils are going to follow me out of the water?!?"

The beady yellow eyes were now pitch black and it was clear they were beyond sense with the taste of blood in the water and air, it became predictable when they were going to strike from the land as they tensed and sprang with a higher pitched chirp. These ones died quickly, the ones that shot out of the water like torpedoes were harder to predict but his reactions were fast enough to catch them before they made contact too.

"They almost had me in the water after that surprise attack, but then they lost all advantage by attacking me on land, why did they keep coming?"

Thoroughly unsettled by this suicidal behaviour he made sure to add all the bodies to his storage space and looked one over closely, its little eyes were still constricted and totally black, the mouth hung loose, its serrated saw blade teeth clearly visible.

"They're like dam building piranhas"

He took the opportunity to check his HP [172/240] and waded back in after picking up his axe.

There were clearly none left in the dam, their whole group having thrown themselves at him in their blood lust.

10 minutes of hacking and prying and the dam fell apart bit by bit until the river flowed freely.

[Quest objective complete: Clear the River]

Considering his options he decided he was healthy enough to investigate the Skebble nest while he was down here. Though he would have preferred to be moving forward with higher health, he hadn't expected the clear river quest to be the more dangerous.

He was quite thankful for the positions of these two quests as he moved east along the river as it confirmed for him where the river turned away from the relatively straight west to east course and continued down to the south. As he left the river he checked his map and found the Skebble nest was about a third of the way from the river bend to the boar forest. Again he thought of the lights from the previous night and scanned the horizon.

"I'd be about in line with them by now right?"

As he was walking he came across a fair sized skeleton, roughly the size of a rhino; kicking it a few times to be sure it wasn't going to rise up like the human ones he was used to he checked it over.

He couldn't imagine what had happened to it but free loot was free loot so he absorbed it into his storage; checking he found his storage about 80% full and wondered how big a Skebble was and whether he'd have to abandon the bones.

"No great lost I guess, don't know what I'd do with them anyway"

Continuing on he came across the skeletons of what must have been a couple of wolves, and then some kind of rodent. He was feeling less than comfortable about his new gains.

"They're getting more frequent the closer I get to this Skebble thing aren't they? God damn it"

Wondering what could take down so many other creatures and entirely clean a carcass like this he considered hyena or lions but after remembering how altered so many things were in this world he finally settled on a thought.

"It's something that shoots out acid isn't it? I wonder if a shield would help against something like that.

Crunching some bird bones under his feet as he walked he prepared himself to jump back to Earth no matter the consequences. He was getting closer now and as he lined himself up with the map he realised what he was looking at.

"I thought that was a rock but it's too regular"

He moved forward and around to confirm and then he heard the buzzing.

"Shit, they can fly!"

The large termite mound-like nest he was observing burst into activity in front of him as countless shiny black bugs burst out and started flying towards him in streams he threw the stone spear he'd been holding into the cloud and ran.

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

[1 exp]

The cloud of insects was so dense that he apparently hit a chunk of them simply by chance; he kept running but could hear the deafening noise of them closing in. He chanced a look over his shoulder feeling he couldn't outrun them and found he was right.

He couldn't make out any features on the shiny black creatures but knew they'd strip him down to bone in seconds if the state of their feeding ground was anything to go by, he flung his hand back in line with his head and poured flame in to the group as he ran, the sound of searing flame, rapidly cooking and exploding chitin and the incessant buzzing were a sickening combination and pure terror drove him forward.

Even intellectually knowing the dimensional transfer was instantaneous in the moment he was ruled by instinct and fear and his body drove him to run and spray out his MP unreservedly, the exp notifications were continuous, merging together and filling the bottom right corner of his HUD.

He couldn't imagine the reason but it seemed their hive mentality made it so that rather than surrounding him and devouring him from his unprotected sides the swarm continued to retract towards the centre closest to him to replace the numbers being burned from the sky by his flames.

As he continued to throw his fire into the heart of the swarm the buzzing lessened and he soon found no more shining black bodies were visible pushing through the flames, as he slowed and eased off his flames the few remaining obligingly threw themselves at him and were burned to a crisp.

He stopped dumb founded and listened to the ticking of cooling bugs on the ground and ticking of the exp still reporting itself to him in the bottom corner of his HUD.

"It's just like the beaver monsters, everything in this world is insane"