Chapter 69: Chapter 69 - Nice Loot

Seeing that Zoe wasn’t responding, Anton activated [Dandelion Gaze].

His eyes trembled like soap being blown into a bubble. The silvery eyes slipped out of his own and floated about the room. They shone with Mirrored essence, but at their core was Sky. Nine floated about the room, looking in all directions, and letting him see everything.

Without the technique activated, it felt like wearing blinkers.

With the death of the Zees, the black flames on the dungeon fruit trees burned low, and faded, until the embers were pulsing shadows within the charcoal stumps. Soot coated the lumps and fangs of the cave ceiling. Bella lay against the wall, breathing steadily as her sword restitched her flesh.

They had failed. Zoe, already more powerful than them, had returned like a monster from the deep shadows. Without her, they would be dead. Did it sting that he relied on her power to survive this place? If not for him and Bella dragging her back, Zoe would be fine, but without her…

He searched himself. No. He enjoyed being alive. The end justified the means. Pride was for martyrs.

An eye floated over Zoe’s shoulder and gazed into the chest. Weapons, a helmet, and a book lay inside. The golden field of light stretched up from within, and his eye let him see the faint impression of Skein in the light. He couldn’t understand it completely, but it seemed to be a barrier. Permeable, but barbed. They could reach in, but it wouldn’t be straightforward to reach out.

“Wait,” he said, though nobody was reaching inside. “The golden light is suspicious.”

“Okay,” Bella said from where she lay against the cave wall.

He spared her a glance, but no sympathy. She would be up and about soon enough. Nobody was dead. Nobody was even hurt given the reality of Vitality.

He could still taste the Zee’s fingers in his mouth. Would Vitality remove the flavor from his memory? Or did Insight brand it into his mind?

He limped over to the glowing treasure chest in the center of the safe room. His footsteps splashed in the gore. The Zees floated, headless, twisted, in a sticky pool of blood that soaked his pants and his shoes as he walked up to where Zoe stood staring at her hand.

Aura coated her skin like rainbow flames. His eyes darted around her, but an instinctive fear stopped them from getting too close. The flames spoke of true and horrible destruction. Touching them would not just pop his eyes, but steal a part of his soul and feed it to his enemies.

“What are those flames?” he asked.

Zoe waggled her fingers.

“Flames?”

“The aura. You’re burning up. Is it a new ability? You seem to develop those every few hours.”

She gave him a typical Zoe glare. So much anger in there.

“It was weeks for me,” she said. “And I don’t know what this is.”

“Does it hurt? Is your Skein affected?”

Zoe frowned, and looked inwardly, the constipated expression someone wore when they examined their status.

“I don’t think so.”

He shrugged.

“Then let's check out the loot.”

Zoe nodded absent-mindedly, but he kept one eye on her as he looked into the treasure chest. This was his chance to finally level the playing field. His reliance on Bella’s sword and Zoe’s power was ending.

With weapons, armor, and tools, he could contribute more than a set of eyes and a pretty face. And what good even were his eyes if he couldn’t see a boss lurking right above their heads? The Skein had been there, thick and potent, he just didn’t understand what he saw. The physical and the essence overlapped, but how could he know what he saw?

He dismissed the frustration. Failures would not rule him. Instead, he focused on the future and gazed down at the golden field of light. How did this work? He poked it with a curious finger. The golden field trembled like jello and the system whispered in his mind.

[Congratulations! You have found a Pick One Chest!]

[Please pick one:

* Etching Spear: An emerald-tipped spear that inflicts acid with each strike.

* Helm of Drowning Fish: A water-breathing helmet that grows into armor when worn.

* Introductory Tome of the Bloody Thunder School: A book containing a treatise on the Storming Absolution spell.

* Living Glass Axe: An obsidian-headed axe that can regrow its shattered blade when placed in blood.

* Everywhere Lens: A monocle that allows the wearer to project their ability everywhere that they can see.

Zoe looked up at him.

“Should we discuss who gets what?” she asked.

“Zoe chooses last,” he glanced over to Bella. She was really in terrible shape. He hoped she got up. She would though. Her sword was fixing her. Nothing to worry about. “How does that sound?’

Bella gave a thumbs up.

“Zoe’s overpowered,” she grinned, though her voice was pained. “She should probably give her choice to us.”

He smiled as Zoe and Bella bickered without heat.

“I’m going first,” he said as he reached into the chest.

Zoe stopped him. Her fingers rested on his wrist. She didn’t grab him, didn’t need to, and as her hand retreated he trembled, just once. He wasn’t scared, he just knew how strong she was.

“Those items all sound powerful,” she said. “But only two are weapons. I’m sorry Anton but, you lack offensive power. And Bella,” she turned to face the recuperating Australian. “Your sword is powerful, and it helps you recover, but you’re too fragile.”

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“You’re comparing us to yourself,” Anton said. “But you’re twice our level.”

“I need you to keep up.”

He scoffed, but she gave him a stare so intense he couldn’t meet it with any of his eleven eyes.

Instead, he looked inward.

Status

Name: Anton Biggs

Level: 10

Body: The Open Flower (Rank 1, Progress 0/10)

ATTRIBUTES

Might: 9

Vitality: 7

Dexterity: 20

Willpower: 11

Insight: 47

Skein: 45/92

Titles: Intrepid, Tailwind, Fools Rush In (Incomplete), Magnifying Glass

Techniques: Dandelion Gaze

“Alright,” he surveyed his options. “I need to hit harder, but I’ve never used a spear or an axe to attack anybody.”

“What have you used?”

He almost said a gun. A knife. A USB cable one time. Knuckles white. His pulse quickened like high atmosphere winds. The whistle faded.

As always, he became himself once more and smiled.

“I’ve fired guns before,” he shrugged. “The spear and axe are fine, but I think the [Everywhere Lens] sounds the most powerful. I’m sure there’s a catch to it, and I don’t have a compatible technique at the moment, but still…”

An item that cast a technique everywhere he could see. It made him so curious.

But his eyes brought him distressing news.

“There’s a problem,” he sighed, there always was with them. “The Zees aren’t dead.”

The dead bodies twitched. Small, sporadic movements like squirming in stop motion. Ripples spread through the flowing blood.

Zoe shook her head.

“I felt their death energy flow through me,” she knelt and touched a corpse. “There’s a heartbeat, sporadic,” electricity zapped her fingers, and she pulled away. “Every time a spark travels through them, they twitch and the heart pumps. I don’t like it, but I’m not sure it's a problem…”

“They’re twitching toward each other.”

They watched as a headless Zee twitched inch by inch toward another Zee ripped in half by a stomp to the collarbones. Zoe stepped on the headless torso. She crushed the shoulders with a steel foot. Blood splashed. She kicked the pelvis so hard it tore with a sound like wet cloth.

Bella retched.

“Is that enough?” she asked.

The body parts, torn, destroyed, continued twitching. Zoe looked at Anton.

“Make your choice.”

His eyes floated over the corpses as he surveyed the open chest. He turned to Zoe.

“I want to ask a favor,” he felt his heart in his throat. “Will you give me the item you pick from the chest?”

“Yes,” she didn’t hesitate. “But choose wisely.”

He reached into the chest.

The [Everywhere Lens] was a simple monocle of steel and glass with a dangling string of braided red and white silk. Microscopic runes glinted in the steel frame and they glowed white as his fingers touched the string.

Did he dare tell Zoe he was going on nothing but a hunch?

No.

[You have selected the Everywhere Lens. If your hand passes through the chest barrier without the Everywhere Lens, or with any other item, it will be removed]

His heartbeat quickened. If he dropped the lens he would lose a hand. His grip tightened, and suddenly sweat coated his fingertips. His Dexterity, his Vitality, was high enough that something like this shouldn’t be a problem, but suddenly he was a child again trying to lift cigarettes from his sleeping father’s pockets.

Grabbing the monocle, he yanked his hand up and out of the barrier. His hand was secure. He let out a sigh of relief.

The others gave him an odd look, they mustn’t have gotten the warning.

“It chops off your hand if you drop the item,” he turned to Zoe. “My favor… Can you remove the [Tome of Bloody Thunder]?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Are you sure?”

“I think I can combine the lens with the spells in the tome to create an area of effect.”

“But it’s a whole book. Maybe it will take months, or years of study to comprehend. We need your help right now. How do you know you can learn the spells in time?”

Hunch.

He couldn’t say that.

But she wasn’t arguing with him. He could see in her eyes that she would choose what he wanted — why would she do that? — but she wanted him to explain.

“All these items are things that are useful for this dungeon. Acid to get past the mirrordile armor. A helmet that lets us breathe in the sunken town. I think the book will help fight inside the dungeon. The spells, or techniques, or whatever is inside, has to be helpful now.”

She nodded.

“Alright.”

She stepped up and reached into the chest. Her eyes widened as the system warning sounded inside her head but she yanked the book out just as fast as him.

Crinkled red leather bound the pages yellowed with age. Anton couldn’t remember the last time he picked up a book, but his fingers brushed over this one with reverential care. He could see, he could feel, the tightly packed Skein inside. This book contained secrets that were his to unlock.

A shackle of possessiveness closed around his heart, looping, locking, and he held the book out toward Zoe.

“If this isn’t a single-use item,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know how this works, but I want to share it.”

Zoe looked at him, studied him, inscrutable — she could snap him and take everything. He held the most powerful items, the best items, but nothing made them his except her permission — and she nodded.

He smiled, but his eyes danced with distress.

One of the Zee’s fingers twitched and crawled and dragged the heavy gutless corpse toward another. The long grey ring finger brushed against another corpse’s elbow, and the flesh fused with a bright blue spark. Now two bodies twitched and wormed as one. He didn’t need to announce the fresh horror. They all saw. The bodies were fusing, penning them in with a ring of flesh. The twitches grew more frequent.

Scrape of blade on stone as Bella used her sword to stand.

“I’m coming,” she said, voice hoarse, and her steps forced winces as she approached.

Her blade tapped out like a cane, stabbing into corpses and pulsing with heat that blackened flesh, but the twitching continued, and Bella’s strained face showed her nearing the limits of Skein and consciousness. She sliced at the fusing corpses, but the flesh ran like steaming rivers around her blade.

They didn’t have long until the corpses recovered, and Zoe hurried to help Bella over to the chest.

“What do you two suggest?” Bella asked as she gazed into the golden light.

“I think the armor,” Zoe said.

“Get a weapon,” Anton said at the same time.

They exchanged a glance, but the slight splashing of corpses was too tense an ambiance to permit a smile.

“I have a weapon,” Bella said, though he could see her thinking the same thing as him.

She didn’t have a weapon; she had a pet.

And pets must be fed.

She thrust her hand into the golden light, frowned at the warning, and dragged out the [Etching Spear]. The emerald tip pulsed with insidious light. A sharp point with flared guards like something for hunting boars.

With two weapons in hand and blood-streaked wounds, Bella looked like an ancient warrior. A battle fanatic. The purity of her heart lost behind this visage of one-eyed brutality.

Was this the fate the system had in mind for them? Attack and advance until we leave ourselves behind?

Not for him.

Look and see and know. Never forget the self. Never abandon the truth.

His musings, ever spiraling like a feather on the wind, dissipated as the chest vanished with a pop of light. In the following silence, the surrounding flesh shuddered and groaned before rearing up like a wave of mutilation.