The two hunters arrived back at the wagon without issue. They’d come across some more murk rats and some giant bug things that tried dropping on them from the trees but neither encounter had proved to be anything other than annoying. They weren’t even worth looting from what Emil had told him.

  Checking on Norman they were both glad to find him with better accommodations and fresh. Surprisingly it seemed Colber had used some of his own stock for the man and he was currently resting on a fancy cot with plush pillows and fresh bandages. Though he was out cold and had a wet towel draped across his forehead.

  “What the hell are you two doing back here?” Colber’s voice cut through the room like a whip, Emil whirling to face him in response.

  “We’ve been out killing anything that moved trying to get a shard or some some sort of item to help him, though I’m surprised to see you helping.” Emil gestured angrily at the dying fisherman.

  “Hah! Sure you were and I’m carrying cores not fish!”

  “I’m not lying to you Colber. We’ve been searching for a dryad or anything for him.” Emil continued.

  “Oh will you stop it. I’m not some bumbling fool to be taken for a ride hunter. I know all about your job history and how you love to slack. What’s it been, six months since your last one?”

  Emil shouted into the air in frustration as he failed to get through to Colber, and in an act of frustration and the desperate need for exoneration he produced the core of tentacles they’d looted from the root sucker.

  “On my life, on my honor, on the life of my wife and unborn child, I swear to you that we were looking for Norman. Ozzy left his familiar aboard in case something happened. I messed up, I put Norman in this position by fighting that root sucker. If I hadn’t we’d still have a potion for him. Consider this collateral and a gesture of my trust.” With shoulders slumped he pressed the core into Colber’s chest and when the Wagon Captain didn’t grab it he forced it into the stunned mans hands.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” Colber asked, the haughty lilt leaving his voice as he stared in wonder at the core.

  “I don’t care, what I want is for you to understand that I’m not doing this for the money. I already had more than enough to live comfortably for a year with that core. I didn’t need to keep going out for more loot. Tell me Colber why would I risk it and my license when all I had to do was sit tight and wait to get home?” Emil asked.

  Ozzy felt too much like an outsider to step into the conversation. He’d known Emil for all of a few days and though it they’d felt like the longest days he’d ever lived through he still felt like a stranger among them. Even if what he had to say might’ve added something he couldn’t bring himself to get between a conflict he just couldn’t begin to understand the complexities of.

  Straightening Colber looked Emil straight in the eye, fixing him with a father’s stare as he appraised every nook, cranny, and wrinkle on the big hunters face, searching for any trace of a tell. Half a minute passed before anything was said, the silence breaking as Norman let out a string of wheezing coughs. Several tense moments later the captain relaxed, his posture softening.

  “I had my boys look into you in the guild records when you picked up my job. I apologize if my inferences as to the gaps in your record. They led me to believe you were some bum with cores. You truly have my humblest of apologies.” Colber stuck a hand out to Emil, and they shook like equals.

  “I don’t need this,” Colber pressed the core back into Emil’s chest, “besides I’m pretty sure anyone I tried to sell this to would just kill me.” The captain chuckled, taking on an amicable appearance with them for the first time that trip.

  Nodding in appreciation to the captain Emil took the core back.

  “What’s our plan then?” Ozzy asked, breaking the silence he’d been holding since Colber arrived.

  “We’re two hours away from the murk line, and at least two days from the city. Normans fevers gotten to the point where he’s hardly ever coherent and he’s having trouble breathing. Whatever they dipped these arrows in is doing a number on him.” Colber said, pulling a black arrowhead out of his breast pocket to show them.

  “Let me see that.” Ozzy took the arrowhead from Colber, being extra careful not to prick one of his fingers on the sharp sides as he used his watch to scan it.

  Item identified

  Poisoned iron arrowhead

  This arrowhead has been dipped in a common swamp poison known as black rot poison. Coming into contact with this poison can cause fevers, hallucinations, and if ingested or injected can lead to sepsis and death.Emil and Colber and Emil crowded around Ozzy to get a look at the screen. Each scowling as they read through the text.

  “That’s about what I figured.” Emil grunted. “Doesn’t change anything.”

  “Then we go over the Murk as quickly as we’re able?” Colber paused and looked between the two hunters. “We’re close enough we might be able to lift the wagon early.” He said, a crease forming above his brow as he took on a grave look.

  “Won’t that bring something big enough to push through the islands up hunting for us?” Ozzy asked, a fear he didn’t know he had about the deep swamp beginning to bubble up inside of him.

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  “They can’t get close to the Murk, it keeps the leviathans further at bay than everything else, and while one might show up it’s only a chance that one will actually come.” Colber said.

  “If we count on it not happening we’re just making the worlds worst plan.” Ozzy deadpanned.

  “Then what’s the plan?”

  ***

  “All set!” Ozzy shouted at the wagon.

  He got a thumbs up in return from one of the fishermen on the top platform and watched as the wagon began to change. He sat in awe as its wheels began to move down the length of the wagon, each arriving at the back where they began to grow in size. They began flattening out and slowly grew to the point where they reached above the height of the wagon and dipped into the water a few inches beneath it. Each propeller blade had been formed into long sweeping fan blades and with a magical hum they began to slowly spin.

  “Hurry up! It’s not gonna wait for you!” The same fisherman who’d given him the thumbs up shouted at him.

  Pushing mana into the dinghy’s startup circuit he felt as it flared to life, with the leftover catfish meat still in the mana box he floored it over to the side of the swamp wagon where they could lift him back up and into safety.

  On board the wagon Emil was busy preparing a very special blend of monster meats. Emil had explained to them that he could use fish chum and some of the monstrous catfish meat to make a wad of bait that could attract whatever monster they wanted. Or at least it worked with everything that lived outside of the swamps depths.

  Ozzy didn’t have it in him to mention the fact they had no idea whether or it’d work. They were as deep into uncharted territory as it got. They’d explained to Ozzy that the leviathans were as much myth as they were very real monsters. There were so few tales of them partly due to the fact that the run ins people had with them were almost always fatal. Some stories even mentioned wagons just dropping under the surface and disappearing as a mouth an acre across decided it was lunch time.

  This lack of information also fed into their plans however. In preparation for lifting the wagon they’d done two things. One, they’d set up Emil’s bait bag under one of the dinghy’s which was trailing them by a good forty feet, it was currently being manned by Frank.

  Ozzy had been more than a little surprised to find out the rat could power magical circuits and had quickly come up with the idea of a decoy boat once they supercharged the engine with about ten pounds of magical rat meat and tethered it to the top of the wagon with a long pole. With the bait bag and it’s position next to the wagon it’d hopefully prove to be a much juicier target than the actual wagon; which from what Ozzy understood would only just be touching the water once it became this places equivalent of an airboat. So it would only have a little more surface than the dinghy had.

  Their next portion of the plan had to do with Ozzy’s shotgun shells. While he’d summoned his shotgun shells with the intent of using the gunpowder inside of them each time he’d tried doing anything other from using them for their intended purpose they’d just dissipate back into mana. So he unfortunately had to switch to his real rounds.

  While the stun blast shotgun shells probably had the most powder in them he was loathe to give up his only non lethal means of combat. Instead he opted to use all of the rounds he had left, both the speed loaders for his revolver and the four left over rat tooth rounds.

  After taking the rounds apart and extracting the gunpowder he wrapped pile of powder in a large wad of paper. Then to top it all off he sealed it with candle wax. The general idea was that if the leviathan got to bait boat they’d throw the improvised bomb out as a diversion. They held no reservations about actually hurting the monster just getting it away from them would be enough if it decided to show up.

  Emil had theorized them to be above tier six, and whatever that meant Ozzy wasn’t sure of. He just knew that with their lowly tiers of zero they’d be swamp chum if they tried to do anything but run away.

  ***

  The swamp wagon’s airboat mode sounded more like a hurricane than an airboat, and it got even louder as they started to move. Ozzy watched as his point of view gradually shifted upwards as while they gained speed the wagon started to rise out of the water.

  They continued gaining speed for well over a minute only occasionally losing momentum as Colber dodged trees and went bounced over the little islands dotting the swamp. Their speed only starting to even out once Ozzy could feel the wind trying to tear the air out of his lungs. He had to cup a hand over his nose just to be able to breathe comfortably, and it wasn’t made any easier by their captain.

  Colber had seemingly inhuman agility behind the controls of the wagon. It flowed with him like an extension of his body, each movement he made on the controls perfectly balanced and calculated to deliver them across the dense swampland.

  They weaved in and out of trees, over islands, and across flats like Colber had been driving this stretch of swamp his entire life. He drifted them around trees, jumped islands to get over obstacles, and caught air time that would’ve made Motocross pros breathe heavy.

  Right as they began to think they were in the clear, as smiles began to replace worried expressions, and joy began to take root. They heard it.

  With a sound that dwarfed the impossibly loud noise of the fans by an order of magnitude something made itself known. They all heard it before seeing anything but it wasted no time on stealth. A massive crest rose above the surface of the water, tearing through the islands it came into contact with, slowly beginning to gain on them from where it tore through the swamp several hundred meters back.

  The Leviathen’s roar could have ended worlds and it only grew in intensity and volume until with a sharp pain Ozzy felt his ear drums give out. The only way he knew the roar continued was through the heavy thrums of vibration that pulsed through the balls of his feet, in his chest, and shaking his very mind. It was sound weaponized, and it felt like it could stop his very heart.

  Still unable to hear Ozzy watched from the top deck as the leviathan came to surface of the water to see the world up above with a pair massive green glowing eyes. It had a face like an arapaima, he remembered the look from a tv show back on earth. The features were all warped however. The eyes sat on the top of its head, unusually close together, giving it the impression that it had never and would never look down. It was a leviathan of the deep, food only existed above it.

  As it broke the surface of the water Ozzy saw that its maw hung open. It was like some horrific serpentine basking shark. It continued its ascent, its maw clearing the tops of some of the shorter trees as it rose forty feet above the water line, uncaring whether it devoured islands, trees, or the monsters on them. It pushed on through each obstacle, not slowing as it continued even further above the water.

  As its head rose above the height of the swamp wagon, they were hid from its view and Ozzy thought they might be able to gain some distance from it as it lost sight of them. That hope was shattered when thick pink tendrils of corded muscle pushed the leviathan’s eyes up and out of their sockets like pop toys; the the muscular eye stalks panning them about until with the finality of death they locked back onto the wagon, willing death upon them.