Wade flew forward on the first step. The leap sent him off balance, but he landed with great luck on dried porous bone flooring, which provided excellent grip.
It wouldn't have been enough to keep him stable, but instinct and the extra point in agility gave him the excellent idea to hop and bleed momentum off to recover properly.
Maybe two or three more points into agility would let him pull off cartwheels or super jumps with the added speed boost the boots were giving him.
But that'd be for a future build, if he ran into something that needs major agility. The boots were a good addition.
And he needed to make good use of them, because Medy was already way ahead of him, only stopping to look back.
Of which, she didn't look pleased. Rather horrified. Which meant there was something further behind Wade.
He immediately turned his head back and saw it.
Hard to miss too. A tiny head about twice the size of his own recessed within a far larger shell, and a few dozen smaller legs under the shell scuttling over the ground as it raced after him. The rest of that body was very clearly twice Wade's overall size. Possibly three times. A fat armored thing, the edges of the carapse coming out into spikes.
Identify.
Level 38 Mana-infused Isopod - 100%
Isopod? Those were supposed to be scavengers, right? That didn't sound too dangerou- "WADE, RUN!" Medy shouted as loud as she could.
Wade didn't ask questions. He turned, and bolted forward after her.
The Isopod's scuttling accelerated behind him, legs clicking rapidly against bone ground as Wade sprinted ahead at full speed with everything his new body technique and boots could allow him. He pushed his luck and agility harder, weaving around the small rivers of liquid mana trickling on the ground, jumping over each. He wasn't certain his rubber boots were impervious to those rivers, but the real concern was the growing meat gorging itself at the bottom of those streams. It looked slimy as hell, and he was sure if he stepped on that and he'd lose his footing entirely.
Which would be fatal in this point since the Isopod behind him would catch up.
Could he fight this thing with what he had?
It was level 38. Not impossible to fight, he knew his player level was something different compared to mob levels out there. THE GAME was using his levels to keep track of stat points, not actual threat levels. And with grenades and bullets, he'd probably be around level 30ish.
The grenade experts around Zin had all been near that level because of their skills with guns and grenades.
He looked behind him at the giant angry rolly polly. And then he saw fangs start to stretch out of where its mouth should be.
Wade decided on plan nope, followed by hell no.
"Faster!" Medy called back. "They spit goo that'll trap you down, then they inject venom when they catch up!"
He internally upgraded the plan from hell-no to absolutely-not.
He had gear and supplies with him along with his dodge rolls, but this thing wasn't high enough of a level to trigger any goodies, and killing it likely wouldn't give him good enough experience given how stingy the System was.
Add to the fact this thing had the potential of robbing him of his mobility advantage, and the better choice was to conserve his ammo for something more worthwhile.
"Can we shake it?!" He called out ahead.
"Yeah! We're close to the outskirt regions, we'll find somewhere cramped enough it can't follow! Just don't let it hit you with the spit and you'll be fine!"
She wasn't sounding super panicked. Mostly on target and even laying down those mana tags left and right to keep their tracks up for Bael later. And with Wade's current speed being faster then Medy, he was rapidly catching up with her. And rapidly leaving the Isopod in the dust.
The gear he was holding on should have slowed him down, but he could feel the body strengthening buff actually fortify his stamina somehow. Or just empower him. It really was like a home-made version of the blackrot buff.
Behind him, the creature's head stretched further from its shell like a turtle. Wade caught a glimpse of mandibles and what looked like two very large fangs extending out.
Medy told him what that meant almost at the same time: "Wade, it's preparing to spit!"
It, in fact, did spit. And it was so much worse than what Wade could have imagined.
For one, it was clearly empowered by something since the glob it of went flying like a bullet directly at him. And for two, while he managed to jump out of the way by cycling his mana into his legs and trusting his intelligence points to carry his intention of leaping like a flea, he did get to see what happened to the spot he'd just vacated:
This thing spat concrete. As in, the moment it landed on the bone, it spread out like liquid and rapidly condensed into some kind of instant-seal solid.
Which meant if this thing hit Wade, he wouldn't be just fighting off sticky spit. He'd be half-entombed. And then probably spat at a few more times until the giant bug was certain he couldn't fight back anymore, before it stabbed him with something worse. "Medy! How much further do we need to run?!"
Medy pointed ahead. "There! We're going down! Watch where you jump!"
A crevasse opened up between bone structures. More like a bubble of air with what looked to be some kind of feather-like dusters waving in the air from the inside. She leapt over it gracefully, hooves finding purchase on the far side. The feathers instantly retreated into the crevasse and clearly wanted nothing to do with Medy or anyone nearby.
Then she vaulted down inside after the feather like things, vanishing underground like they had.
Wade didn't have hooves. Or grace. But he did have a point in agility, and by god that was going to have to do.
He jumped, landing with oddly good grace.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Then he turned and looked down before he'd jump inside.
And saw why Medy had warned him about the leap.
Level 2 Mana-infused Acorn Barnacles
There were multiple shelves of giant barnacles stuck to the side, all of them having already retreated their feather dusters back inside, and at the bottom he saw even more of them, making the ground completely unstable and jagged. Glowing light was dim at the bottom, spilling inwards from a wallside further near the bottom.
Well. The System was saying these things weren't too dangerous. But all the shells looked real sharp. If he messed up, he'd be sliced deep.
And the giant Isopod was catching up fast.
He jumped, aiming for the center of the crevasse, hoping the System or his luck would follow him here.
Luck was with him. He landed at the bottom without issue, and nothing he'd been carrying had caught on the sides.
He turned to see Medy further down the little tunnel ahead, where she'd made it to the far back and started crawling.
Something hit Wade on the leg and boot, splattering off, landing all over, and instantly drying off from viscous liquid, into sticky liquid, into basically cement.
Wade looked up and saw the Isopod had arrived, unable to fit the rest of the shell inside, but clearly able to both spit inside and probably extend the head down far enough to stab him.
Wade tried again to tug at his boot. It remained completely stuck in place. The chittering neck descended down at him. Likely about to spit on him two or three more times just to be certain he wasn't making it out.
Wade didn't have time to draw his Glock and fire. Nor enough time to do anything with his grenades.
So he did what anyone with a foot and leg stuck in immovable concrete would do:
He dodge rolled.
His body locked in place, animation forcing him up and off the ground. The dried spit instantly cracked into wet shards all over as Wade's entire body made the full animation - and would complete that animation regardless of anything in the way.
His hands stretched up and expertly went slightly through the ground as no weight was actually put into them at all. Instead his body turned by itself, defying the laws of physics in some close-ish approximation to what a dodge roll should have looked like, without any consideration into how uneven the ground was ahead of him.
He found himself deeper in the tunnel, out of sight of the extended head of that Isopod chasing them.
The bits by his leg and knee that had once held everything locked in place were just cracked shards with bits of fading blue glow, shattered when the System's animation included rolled in knees as part of the dodge roll.
Medy was on the other end of the tunnel, staring after him. "What was that?"
"What do you think it was?" Wade shot back, shuffling down the tunnel after her. "Bullshit, that's what! Also a lot of luck and possibly a prayer halfway through, I don't know, I just work here!"
That came out by reflex, but Medy could understand the intention behind it all: I'm making it all up as I go.
The Isopod behind them clearly didn't care about anything except that its meal had escaped. Somehow slipping free from the mana-infused spit that normally caught most prey.
That was illegal. It just didn't have the brain to process that thought, but it sure felt it.
The creature tried to force its head deeper into the crevasse, feet skittering off the hard shells around it, the entire body blocking its way in. And Wade watched its health bar drop a few percentages as the top of its head struck a closed barnacle shell, likely slicing into the softer extendable skin.
Wade couldn't actually see the monster itself from this angle in the tunnel, but he could track its health bar through the bone surrounding them. The Isopod struggled repeatedly to squeeze inside, taking light damage each time its carapace failed to shield some vulnerable part against the jagged shells all around. If it felt pain from the assault, it wasn't making much sound other than angry thrashing. Perhaps it lacked any means to scream at all.
"It's not going to come after us." Medy said, finally sitting down after her mad scramble. The tunnel ahead continued, but it had shrunk to the point she'd need to crawl on her hands and hooves to make it through.
"Are you absolutely sure about that? Because it definitely looks like it wants to come after us." Wade said, shuffling over until he was as far as he could go in the small tunnel, now sitting down near Medy.
Further ahead, the shells thinned out where the tunnel narrowed even more. There was a faint glow of what was likely liquid mana, just barely visible from his current position. So the tunnel might lead into a larger pool of mana. Which meant they couldn't cross that.
This place was absolutely terrible, tactically. Stuck in a dead end, anything out there coming in could attack them and Wade would be down a few advantages, like his entire speed boon and mana empowered legs.
He took out his Glock instead, made sure there was a full magazine and chambered bullet, then prepared for anything coming after them both.
"Oh, I'm sure it wants to come in, but the barnacles here solidify the place up. That's how they survive, the shells are too hard for most smaller animals to crack through, so only the big ones are a danger." Medy said, one hand pointing ahead at all the surrounding tunnel.
Wade looked back at where the Isopod was thrashing above. Feet trying to push it further inside, but the rest of the size was making it impossible to wedge itself deeper. Very bad angle to try and crack any of these shells down here, Wade could see how the survival tactic worked. And the longer the Isopod or predators here tried, the higher chances of getting cut and hurt on the shells.
"Usually there should be an other end of the tunnel leading further down, because mana passes through here like an air current. The barnacles here eat something out of that flow as far as I know. We just got a little unlucky here it got this tight on this end." She turned to look behind her, bumping her horns for a moment on a closed shell above her. "We might still be able to fit through, just need to take your backpack off and gently pass it through on its own."
The System had called them acorn barnacles, but that was more an approximation. And Medy's word for them had been in demonic and he could tell it was something different compared to actual barnacles he knew from Earth. Just that his language buff had squinted a bit, and decided it was close enough. Maybe the System was doing the same with naming things?
Food for thought for another time, when they weren't running for their lives.
"So we're safe here?" He asked.
She nodded back, sitting down on the hard closed up shells that covered the floor here. "I'd be running more if it wasn't safe. Like, the most dangerous part of these branchia tunnels is getting your suit caught on one of these shells and sliced up. They're all very sharp you know? And then the pressure here fills right into your suit and you're already dead basically. But, well..." She tapped her arms and legs. "We don't have any suits right now, there's no danger of that, so we just need to be careful not to cut ourselves and that's waaaaay easier to do when you're not in one of those bulky suits."
"All right good to know." Wade nodded, "Is Bael going to be okay?"
"He's got all the mana he needs to run fast. The real danger is when you need to hold your ground to protect something, that's where we usually die. If you're allowed to run off, it's pretty easy to survive so long as you don't run yourself into a dead end or into an ambush predator hiding in place. Or walk into a nest of some kind. Or… actually there's a lot of things that could kill you even if you can run fast, but Bael's a demon like I am, we all spent plenty of time here learning all the ways to survive the best." She nodded vigorously at him. "He'll be fine. Well, for about three hours or so, and then we're all going to start dying. But you said you had a way out?"
They could already hear the Isopod above start to give up, shuffling off.
"Yeah. We're getting out of here back to Earth. Just need to get the right order of operations done and make sure I'm safe on the return trip back here after." He looked over himself, at the tunnel. According to the System and what he'd tested prior, he was reasonably sure this tunnel here would count as safe shelter. All he'd need to do would be to unfurl his makeshift bed from his backpack, and then he could trigger the quick extraction. "If push comes to shove, I'll just bring you and Bael home right now, and take tomorrow as a dud. We'll see how impossible it is to actually make it to safe ground, if it's not worth the risk, I say we call it early."
He could plan out a full operation back on Earth, get the info on where he needed to run and what to look out for, get himself in a good position where he'd survive coming back, and then end the round early. It would suck if he ended up with a great random boon though. But he would just have to do the best with what he had to work with.
Medy gave him a bright smile in the dim darkness. "Okie. And uhh..." She looked down, and seemed to have a harder time talking. Wade caught mumbling.
"Sorry, repeat that?" Wade asked, trying to hear her.
"...Thank you." She said, trying to be louder, squeezing her eyes shut while she did so. "I really hope this is the last time I have to hide in this kind of place."
