Knives & Levels - Chapter 66

The next day—was one of business. After Colt finally got up from his rest, he found that only Julia was left in the house with him. The girl was busy drinking a small cup of water in the kitchen and raised an eyebrow as he crawled out of his room. Colt felt like death itself as he moved, muscles sore and his Soul still bruised from overuse.

“Where’d they go?”

“Scouting, hunting, and trying to find groups. That soldier guy, Nate, said that he didn’t see much point in wasting time and that it was best if we split up anyway.” Julia shrugged and wiped at her eyes. They looked a tad tired, with black bags, yet she didn’t say anything about it and just took another sip of her water—before standing and stretching.

She put one arm behind her head, grabbing it by the elbow as she winked at Colt.

“I’m your partner for today! So, we’re going to get out and grind, right?”

“Rise and grind,” Colt mumbled and was about to agree before he felt his stomach give a rumble.

“First scavenging, right? This place didn’t have any food in it—but if we break into some of the nearby buildings…” she trailed off, and he agreed, letting the plan naturally bloom.

The two of them left the building, broke into another, and then made a pretty basic peanut butter sandwich, which Colt greedily scarfed down. Thank god for the wild plethora of preservatives in some breads. They were probably toxic, but who cared? He also took the chance in the kitchen to search around and, in a twist of irony, stole another chef knife to use as a weapon. He couldn't help giving a small laugh. After all of this, he’d gone straight back to the first weapon he’d started with in this awful apocalypse.

Anyway, life was about focusing on the moment, not the past. You swam too long in that deep pond, and you got lost.

Colt ate his food. Bread was good. Peanut butter was good. Together, the two combined in a nutty texture that was close to the heart. Simply put, it tasted like the world before this, a simpler time. Julia ate in relative peace, a smile on her face as she looked out at the day. Colt didn’t still feel happy, and couldn’t truly rest yet. But, seeing her more relaxed put him at ease, let him melt into the moment and sink into his food and the light of a new day.

Taking things one step at a time was the key. It eased his anxiety, let him grasp the things he could control, and allowed him to move forward.

Once they finished, they dove into deeper parts of New Nashville. Their mission today as they explored the misty city was twofold: find monsters to kill and, therefore, stack more levels and skills to use later, and then the primary mission: find other survivors. With this in mind, they kept on track to head as far away from New Nashville as they could.

The further out into the ruins of Nashville, the better the chance they would run across a group.

Colt and Julia forded across the city, sticking to the basic principles that Nate taught them: staying low and to the sides of the streets. They took deep advantage of the fog to conceal their overall position within the city and kept their eyes and ears open to detect another person before they did. The issue was that while Colt’s build and abilities naturally lent to stealth, Julia was less so.

Each misstep caused the girl stress, her eyes scanning around as her head grew lower and lower.

“Relax,” Colt said as they moved further, seeing that her mistakes were driving more as her body tensed up.

“I’m messing it up,” Julia said, shaking her head, “I didn’t listen when that guy explained it to us all. I just thought, as stupid as I was, ‘I’m a mage, it’s not my job.’”

“Well, having a more realistic grasp of the situation has changed your mindset, right?” Colt kept moving, keeping his voice low.

There was something ahead, around the bend of the street. Hard to tell exactly, but he saw shapes moving.

“I’m sorry again. It is like a game—I think… It’s what kept me together. I didn’t sleep much; I kept thinking, ‘What happened to everyone.’ And it terrifies me, and I could’ve been one of them, as stupid as I was, thinking this was a game. Now that I don’t have that… I don’t know what to think. Some part of me still screams inside, screaming and saying this isn’t real.”

Colt listened with one ear as Julia went on; the girl at least had the presence of mind to keep her tone lowered as she spoke to match him. A marked difference from the Julia before.

He saw another shuffle in the distance, it almost… Looked like a bunch of stacked boulders on one another. But it moved, shuffling down the corner of the street, difficult to see in the gathered mists of Nashville. Colt’s hand reached for his dagger…

Chef knife. He pulled out his chef knife and shook his head again with the weapon in hand.

“I know how you feel, Julia. Everyone does. We’re sitting here crouched in the forest-like ruins of the city I was happily working in just a month ago. And here I am, holding a kitchen knife, staring at what looks to be moving rocks.”

Colt’s eyes narrowed as he took in the shuffling figure ahead. It was a bunch of boulders stacked on one another, almost like a human. Two legs and two arms jutted off it, but it lacked a head. Instead of that was a big central boulder in which rested a single eye; hard to make out in the mist, but after watching the monster move, the clues came together a bit more, like pieces of a puzzle.

Yep, there was a walking pile of rocks there.

Colt rolled his shoulders and got ready for a fight. Of course, they would Inspect it first, make sure it wasn’t very dangerous, but the highest levels walking around in Nashville he’d heard of or seen were fifty at most, and not much past that.

He wondered how many dungeons they’d walked past on their treks—but then tucked the thought aside as Julia geared up next to him.

She’d shifted from her fear and venting to business. Her hand gripped tight on her staff, and he already felt the shifting of movement as she began to touch upon her Edict.

Surge.

It was odd, as he examined it move in the air and space around them, as she spilled it and morphed it with her mana; it had with it like any other Edict, the base concept. He felt that. But it also had the weight and feel of water to it.

Where it felt like threads with others, different tiny bits that tugged and made up the world around them, some of the Edicts that he’d encountered had instead held a touch of elementalism to it. Scorch, for example, with Ceberous and Surge—now, had an essence of water, but also something else she wasn’t touching.

Colt pressed down on his curiosity and then moved forward to the task at hand.

He got within range of the creature and fired off an Inspect, which finally provided information.

———

One-Eyed Lesser Earth Elemental - Level 48

Description: From deep within the earth and at home with the soil within, this monster is a manifestation of an element. While not as powerful as some of the continental and devastating forces of nature a proper elemental can become, it still has its share of complications when it comes to defeating it. 

Noteworthy Skills: 

Earth Magic [Uncommon] - Level 16

Stone Skin [Uncommon] - Level 14

Inspect (Intermediate) has gained a level!

———

It was a bit higher level than he expected, and often, when one found a monster of one type, there were bound to be others from whatever dungeon it’d leaked out of. Colt felt his Edict wrap around his blade and shared a look with Julia.

She was determined. Right, they were doing this then.

Colt strode forward, a clear mission as he snuck toward the rock monster—disable it, and then he would let Julia finish it off.

He took all the precautions, double-checking that it was alone, and then striding outward with a pull of Movement; in what appeared to be a flash from another person’s perspective, Colt was suddenly by the stone legs of the monster, an invisible wave of Cut tearing right through the rock; there was resistance, sure, but against Cut with a greater rank infused with a bit of Movement… It made quick work. No harder than chopping through a kobold.

Before the monster knew what had happened, Colt took off both its legs.

Rock began to morph and form near him as the monster’s arms rose, channeling whatever magic it had to affect the world around it.

This too, Colt put an end to, chopping through both arms with a rapid succession of two Cuts.

In the end, he was standing next to a rolling pile of rocks that, for its level of forty-eight, couldn’t do a whole lot else. He got the impression that when cutting through it, most people would have a hard time hurting the thing.

Colt kicked the little rock mid-section and looked at Julia with a raised eye.

“Well. Think you can finish it off?”

“I’ll try!” She said, bounding over.

She raised her staff and then blasted the rock with a jet stream of water.

Nothing.

Yeah, this monster just found a bad match-up in Colt. He shook his head. It was unlucky. For a monster like this that relied on pure physical defenses, it was like stacking all your eggs in one basket. Most people would struggle, chipping away at the most. But he’d found that defensive-oriented monsters had a fatal flaw: you were lost if you met something that could overcome your physical defenses.

Cut, especially when paired with movement, was very effective at sheering through defenses of this type. It would need an Edict to stand a chance unless there were a formidable level difference.

Julia looked up at him.

“Try again?” Colt offered. She needed the experience, too.

Julia blasted it with another stream of water, wrapping her Edict into the mana; the water surged, pushing stronger like a wild rapid out of her hand. The staff glowed a deep blue as it flooded the monster.

When she stopped, the creature was mostly intact, with only the smallest of cracks appearing on its surface.

Colt looked up at the sun and sighed, and gestured for her to keep going.

Different strengths played to different advantages; it was a key lesson never to be forgotten. He let her keep blasting away at the monster and explored the surroundings, finding more Earth Elementals. They came apart with ease against the edge of his invisible blade. Rolling them back to the water mage to literally keep chipping away was both hilarious and tragic.

Eventually, after about thirty minutes of grinding, Julia killed the first one.

Another twenty saw her finish the second.

The work had a point, as she said she was pulling in additional skill levels.

At the end of the fighting, Colt made some progress, too.

———

You have leveled up!

You have 3 Stat points to spend. You have gained 1 point of Dexterity and 1 point of Soul.

Thread Weaver (Basic) has gained a level!

———

Colt took a deep breath, a bead of sweat rolling off his eyebrow as he watched Julia finish the last rock monster with a blast of water.

It was hard work, but good work. It felt wonderful to be moving in a concrete direction forward, even though the day started with him still feeling dejected over having to leave Jimmy behind. The sun was high in the sky, and the mist was receding.

He felt better about the future now.

Colt ran a hand through his hair—a twitch in a nearby window caught his eye. His attention snapped to the apartment building, searching.

There.

For a brief second, there was an eye and a face; someone was watching them. Colt looked away, acting as if he hadn’t seen the spy. “Heads up, Julia. I think we’ve run across our first people out here. That building,” he said with a subtle gesture. “Are you ready to say hi?”

Julia huffed, her face red and a small sheen of sweat on her skin from casting for a little over two hours. Hard work, supposedly, to wring out your entire mana core. She described it as having a headache and a full-body workout simultaneously.

“S-sure. Just five minutes, okay?”

Colt nodded, agreeing, and waited. His eyes lazily scanned the building, trying not to make it obvious he’d spotted the people. Now the question was, were these spies from New Nashville, or were they what he was truly after—survivors?