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1049 Words
Matt looked around and cursed as Liz washed up on shore, sputtering.
They had finished the first sublevel of the second floor on Minkalla, and when they found themselves on a vast beach, they figured they just needed to head further inland to find an exit.
However, they quickly figured out that they were on an island and a small one at that. To make matters worse, wading into the water only resulted in being transported back to shore. If they were going to progress, swimming wasn’t an option.
Minkalla also deemed it fit to block flying away from the island in all its various forms, through both equipment and Concept based means.
Liz had even tried flying with her blood by spending Genesis Energy to empower the spell, but it had worked for only a few seconds. They got their hopes up but were quickly disappointed once the spell failed and she was dumped into the water. Once fully submerged, she had been teleported back to the shallows.
Cursing, Liz sat down and pulled off her now waterlogged boots, asking, “How far did I make it? It felt pretty far, but I was having to fight the restrictions of Minkalla to do so.”
Matt broke that hope. “About fifty feet.”
“That’s it?! f**k me sideways. It felt like at least a dozen times farther than that.”
Matt had to hold back a smirk at that comment while Liz stood back up and glared at the gentle waves crashing on the sand. “So, we’re trapped? I don’t believe that… There’s always a way out.”
Susanne came back down the beach from the forested part of the island with the trunk of a tree dragging behind her.
Matt explained, “When we saw you struggling, we decided to split up. Aster went to go hunt some of the rabbit things for us, and Susanne had an idea about this ruin’s test.”
Susanne nodded to Liz as she stopped next to the soaking wet woman with the log in tow. “When we saw you struggle to fly, we knew something was up. We got dropped on a small island with no monsters besides some rabbits, and we can’t swim out?” She shrugged with one arm and continued, “Either this is a wave scenario where we’ll get attacked every night, or we need to make a ship to leave with what we have.”
Matt added his own conjecture. “So, we need to test with a log of wood. Would you mind doing the honors?”
Liz looked from the log to the two of them before asking, “Why me?”
Susanne grinned, “You’re already wet.”
Liz tsked but took the trunk of the tree and dragged it to the water’s edge before shoving it in.
With an easy jump, she landed on the surface and took a few steps to counteract the rolling of the log.
As she bobbed in the water, she turned to them and shrugged, “I can’t really move like this without spending Genesis Energy and I’d rather not.”
Matt nodded and cut a thicker branch to give her a makeshift paddle.
Taking it, Liz paddled her way out thirty feet, then fifty. Once she reached one hundred feet out, a large wave crested above her and crashed down, knocking her off the log.
A second later, she appeared back at the shoreline, soaked even more than before. “Okay, so we need to make a raft or something. Matt, can you drop the house so I can shower and change?”
Matt did so, and then turned to Susanne. “You don’t happen to be a ship building expert?”
She looked at him with a flat expression and offered, “I can chop trees down, but that’s about it. You’re the crafter.”
Matt shrugged helplessly. “I never thought boat building would be a skill that I’d need to acquire. How hard can it be to build a boat…?” As he started thinking through the logistics required to build a proper boat, he changed his question. “How hard can it be to build a raft?”
Not willing to spend his Genesis Energy on his AI, and with the others’ AIs not trained on crafting, Matt started planning the old-fashioned way. “We need similarly sized logs and some rope. We have a few spools of various ropes in storage, so that’s easy.”
Susanne nodded to him but said nothing, turning to the forest. Together they picked out half a dozen trees, then cut and sized them. It was meant to be a rough test, so they quickly tied the logs together to give themselves a square-ish platform they could stand upon before cutting a smaller log into something that resembled a paddle.
Matt volunteered for the newest test but stripped down first. They were seemingly teleported to the shore when they fell into the water, so getting too far away wasn’t an issue. Besides, he had [Cracked Phantom Armor] at the ready if something attacked him.
While they had spent a good bit of their Genesis Energy fighting the various monsters that were strong enough to require spells to defeat, they were still far ahead of their set goal for their current position, so they had some wiggle room.
By combining two of their Genesis Energies as a test, they had seen that they were individually close to reaching the amount needed to get the exit reward. Considering that most delvers didn’t reach that level until they were leaving the second sublevel out of the three that comprised each floor, they knew they were doing well.
Matt pushed out the raft, then jumped onto the logs and winced at the noticeable dip that his weight caused. Their bracing stick had broken when he landed on the log. It was only the first test, but their construction skills needed some work.
Still, Matt was able to paddle out to the one-hundred-foot mark without issue. He did notice that as he neared the place where Liz fell, a larger than normal wave was building, timed just right to hit him at nearly the same spot.
- Writer
