Chapter 68

  Harvesting

  What happened next was a nightmare class in why healers should avoid rifts.

  Moving in a diamond formation, we began to explore the rift. Meaning I was in the exact center and theoretically one or two members of the team were there to protect me at all times.

  However, people being in the way to protect you doesn’t mean much, when the monsters we encounter seem to see the formation, look past it, find me, and then charge forward with reckless abandonment, disregarding stabbings and being shot in the sides, all to charge forward towards me. Causing me to have a jump scare moment each encounter.

  The only fortunate thing that I found from this whole ordeal was that the monsters were less interested in me and more interested in my glowing practice sword.

  Markan noticed smaller serpents to the right. Fired at them, got them angry. Angry enough to charge right at him, the instigator of their annoyance. What do they do? Get close enough to see me and my glowing blade. I can see the moment when recognition fills their tiny greenish eyes.

  Bang, bang, pop.

  Markan continues to fire at the beast, blasting and knocking off chunks of the serpents as they charge right at him, but they are on a mission for directly behind him is me. What does he do? He jumps high in the air, feet kicking wildly, as he jumps to the side and completely avoids the charging snake that is roughly the size of an overweight basset hound and continues to fire at the creature, all while letting it get up a full steam of momentum charging at me.

  Staying still, I wait for the moment when I can strike. My arms are out, my glowing practice blade facing forward. Now I can do one of two things, drop my blade and step to the side, an effect that will allow me to leave. Or I can overcome my fear and do as Mr. Yi suggested of following the beast and waiting for my chance to strike.

  Just like the giant serpent earlier, my chance to strike involves me waiting for the beast to open its wide mouth to strike at me, and then for me to attack into and through its mouth, trying to stab at the serpent’s brain. All before its venomous fangs can latch onto anything permanent of mine.

  As for why my energy infused blade is so enticing towards the monster here, no one knows. Best we can tell is that the blending of Life and Spirit attuned mana used to generate my Soul Devour Skill that I then infuse into my blade is at a perfect ratio that draws out the creature’s survival instincts to both attack, and gain nourishment. That and the size of the sword makes it seem like it could be a smaller snake that would be easily devoured by the larger serpents.

  “Hiss,” the charging serpent cries out, as it lunges forward and basically impales itself at the far end of my blade. Crisp sizzling sounds can be heard, in the way I imagine the largest moth meeting and trying to overwhelm a bug zapper would.

  I shift my wrists upwards, but that movement does nothing as the serpent easily moves out of the way and somehow uses the odd angle to slide further down the blade, bypassing my point of entry to the brain and forcing me to watch as a giant serpent slowly inhales my blade like a fat kid breaking away from their diet for the one footlong hotdog that they managed to find during their dieting process. The process is equal parts sickening, grotesque, and oddly enthralling. I find that I can’t look away.

  Worse, the snake is heavy, and at this angle, it feels like I am wrestling with the giant serpent as it is now a matter of my arm strength, against the beast’s massive weight that is pulling me down.

  Even now the beast has shifted its glowing green eyes upwards from the blade and towards me. The more it stares, the more I can see its eyes glowing a slightly darker shade of green. Or maybe that’s just my fear kicking in.

  Fortunately, I am not alone on this team as the others are already moving in to protect me.

  Slink.

  Mr. Yi’s glowing blade easily slices into and through the beast, lopping off the beast’s first part of its body in an instant. Which you would think, or at least hope would end the danger right there, but it does the exact opposite. For even with its body now bisected, that just means that the massive body of the serpent that I had been fighting against is now gone, as I inadvertently raise my wrists up as the weight I had been struggling with is gone. This new angle, along with the fact that there is nothing holding the snake back, causes a chain reaction of horror as the serpent begins to slide down my blade. Its eyes that had been glowing brightly before are now dimming quickly, but since they haven’t fully faded yet, I can see the raw anger in them. Its last desperate act before it dies fully is to gnash and chew its teeth as it continues to slide down my blade and consume my hands.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Fear grips me for a moment, as I still don’t like snakes, but seeing its descent down my blade, I am at least aware enough to point the blade tip away from me and let the angry creature slide down my blade, away from me.

  Only once it begins to slimily wind its way off my blade and join the rest of its slowly wiggling and dying body do I relax slightly.

  With the beast now slain, we move into our defensive posture. Mr. Karl and Madame Voyou move two steps closer to us and then turn around to protect our backs. While Mr. Yi and Markan begin the process of dissecting the dead and dying beast for its core.

  “Markan? Are you feeling okay?” Mr. Karl calls out from behind us, occasionally glancing over his shoulder at the bisecting of the beast.

  “Yeah, why?” Markan asks, momentarily pausing mid-dissection of the beast, blade still hilt deep in the carcass.

  “Oh, you just never partake in the dissection portion, just wondering if you were possessed?” Mr. Karl replied, his words causing a deep melodic chuckle to come from Madame Voyou. Even the ever stoic Mr. Yi broke a slight smile at the comment. Hearing the words and seeing everyone’s reaction, Markan seemed to get flustered for a moment before responding.

  “I don’t mind harvesting, especially if we can get clean and not lure in more monsters while we explore,” Markan responded and then glanced at me. Seeing his action, I could almost understand, he didn’t like the feel of dirt and blood solidifying on his clothes. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him and was right there with him, had I not been granted the amazing Skill Trash, I don’t know if I would have made it this far.

  After a few more seconds of Markan just staring at Mr. Karl who was diligently looking away at this point, Markan went back to cutting open the monster, occasionally getting snake blood to splash onto his clothes. We made it a pact that I would only have to clean up after they were done working so I only had to apply Trash once. Which was why they continued to work diligently at the harvesting of the monster.

  Seeing them work, I found myself asking, “why don’t we preserve the meat?”

  At my question, I could see Mr. Yi’s nose curl upward with disgust, while Markan seemed to have an almost visceral reaction to my question. Seeing their almost violent reactions, I had to ask.

  “What?”

  “People have tried in the past, but birds and wild animals eating rift flesh is how we ended up with Z-Rot running rampant, outside of these rifts.” Madame Voyou added.

  Hearing that, I instantly thought of a contagion or bacteria of some kind, maybe a virus living within the creatures of these rifts. But as she speaks, a more pertinent question fills my mind.

  “Wait, what about blood and other contaminants getting into our mouth?” I almost panic, remembering when I was inside the giant serpent’s mouth earlier, and wondering if some of that mucus inadvertently got into my mouth.

  “Relax, as far as we can tell it is an exposure thing. Also, older records noted that it depended on the rift that was entered, as to whether the meat could be contaminated. Even then, it required a lot of eating,” Madame Voyou added.

  “Didn’t help that most villages would harvest the monsters by the river, letting the blood and other plague bearing materials to spread downstream,” Mr. Yi added, looking up momentarily from his butchering to interject. That was probably the longest sentence I had ever heard from him.

  Hearing him speak, I could almost imagine him having witnessed such an event firsthand. Then I was reminded of my past life where people would do that, and wonder why cattle and pigs were dying randomly, only to find out dye workers upstream were needlessly pouring dangerous chemicals into the ecosystems.

  “He’s right, at first, we didn’t know what was causing the outbreaks of Z-Rot. We still don’t, not really. We know that animals that eat the flesh of other Z-Rot infected creatures will get the disease, and if a creature with Z-Rot bites you, and you don’t immediately clean the wound you too can expect to be inflicted with Z-Rot.” Mr. Karl added from behind us.

  “That is why Healers are very valuable, as even minor applications of healing magic performed immediately have proven to be a 100% effective against being infected with Z-Rot,” Madame Voyou noted.

  “Which is why we are all glad you are here with us, so thank you,” Mr. Karl responded. Hearing the sincerity of his words and the way everyone nodded in agreement, I felt a lot better about my position on the team. Or on any team really, which I am guessing was part of why I was forced to join this otherwise team of experts.

  “But yes, surveys were done, and experiments were made. But ultimately, it wasn’t until people stopped bringing rift meat out that new outbreaks of Z-Rot were ultimately stopped.” Madame Voyou replied adding more insight into why everyone sneered at the idea of me bringing this meat out to serve to people.

  “While it hasn’t stopped the old outbreak areas, at least those can only expand via creep and slow absorption, versus the original full-on outbreaks that originally started the spreading of the disease,” Mr. Karl concluded.

  Just as I was about to ask another question, Markan finally spoke up.

  “Got it,” Markan exclaimed as he triumphantly held up a small glowing rock that looked like it took up about as much space as a golf ball from my old world would have. Holding it up, he held it out to me expectantly, a look of wild excitement in his eyes. I could almost imagine him having the gold fever that was rumored to have happened to people during the gold rushes.

  Then again, what we were trying to do here was the equivalent of creating gold from nothing.

  Seeing the small orb in his hands I focused and felt a bit of tension for a moment, before ultimately nodding and trying to see if we could do it again. Trying to see if we could create gold, well money from nothing.

  “Okay,” was all I could say, as I felt everyone’s expectant eyes upon me. Reaching deep within myself I cycled my mana, purposefully avoiding my regular reserve of mana that had been filled by this point and instead focused on initiating my Skill from my Class’s special pool of Life mana. Starting there, I circled the mana through my separated class system, then ultimately out into my body, which I then used to power my Personal Skill.

  I could feel the power of Life alter and change my Skill that had solely been meant for cleaning and removing things I deemed to be Trash, awaken and spark to life. That’s when energy flowed out over the orb, cleansing away the dried blood and other materials.

  Just when I thought it was too long, that we took too long to find the core in time. Everyone’s shoulders began to droop as reality seemed to sink in that we weren’t going to repeat the process. That’s when something magical happened.

  The tiny rock began to glow. Green energy was sucked into the stone, causing the stone to pulse and vibrate with colors. Then we all watched as tiny spikes began to grow from the otherwise smooth surface.

  Markan was the first to react, as the look of near disappointment quickly shifted to the jubilant look of excitement of a child finding out there were presents under the Christmas tree.

  It was silent for a moment, then Mr. Karl said the words that caused everyone to be exited.

  “HAHAH! We are going to be rich!”

  And like that, I knew I was ready to try fighting another serpent again.