Publishedat 11th of July 2019 11:26:58 PM
Chapter 110

Book 4, Chapter 110 - Exploring


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The sky above them was typical of a binary star system’s . There was no true night, for it was instead replaced by periods of brief twilight before the sister star’s dawn . Most of the time it was full sunlight, and hot . A normal person likely wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in this place before dying of dehydration .

As the travelers looked around, they noticed the broiling suns above . The largest was four times the size of their moon and burned with a pale blue light .  [1] It was beautiful, and was encased with a blinding and alluring halo . The smaller one was about the size of a pea, and only barely visible .

Surprised couldn’t begin to describe h.e.l.lflower’s reaction . She stood there with her mouth literally agape . Yet the surprises didn’t stop, for in front of them stretched a huge and ancient forest . Instead of large, thick trees they might expect, it was instead composed of towering spindly things with enormous mushroom-shaped canopies .

Wait, not mushroom-shaped . Actual mushrooms!

Those were absolutely gigantic mushrooms! Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them stretched as far as they could see .

The largest of them was about a hundred meters tall or more, and the smaller variety were the size of a thumb . They were easily crushed beneath their feet as the two wandered closer . They came in all different colors as well, and were tightly packed together like a sea of fungus . Spores hung in the air lending to an even more powerful impression they’d stumbled into some surreal dreamscape .

Then there were the creatures, strange things that fluttered through the air . They darted around, eating the spores that floated around .  

Magical, fantastical, incredible!

h.e.l.lflower would never have believed such a thing if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes .

Flora, fauna, environment . . . everything was completely divorced from the reality they came from . Her attention was snapped backed to her side when a gas mask was shoved into her face . Cloudhawk’s hoa.r.s.e voice was warning her, “We can’t be sure these spores aren’t poisonous . Wear this . ”

“The closer we get, the more I like you . ” h.e.l.lflower gave Cloudhawk a coy smirk as she slipped on the mask . Her eyes glimmered as she continued to look around . “It looks like this place has been abandoned, except for these small critters . Where should we start looking?”


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“That’s where Oddball comes in . It’s been doing nothing but eating and sitting around in the Vale for days like a f.u.c.kin’ pig – time for some exercise . ”

Oddball chirped at him, peeved at the insult . How could his master say such things? Oddball had been a good companion, training diligently! The pudgy bird lifted off his shoulder and quickly began to swell . Where Oddball was typically about the size of a fist, suddenly it weighed some fifty or sixty pounds and was considerably larger .

This took Cloudhawk by surprise . “s.h.i.+t, you’ve packed on those pounds! I should start calling you Oddbulge!” [2]

The little thing’s volume had doubled at least, and he kept the same adorable rotund figure . The golden feathers remains, soft and s.h.i.+ning, and its round owl-like head was still half swallowed by the portly form . It was still a ridiculous thing to look at with its round body, big eyes and stubby wings .

h.e.l.lflower’s scientific standpoint was confounded by what she saw . Physics dictated that a creature that fat with so little lift shouldn’t have been able to fly at all . As she watched Oddball let out a shrill chirp, and started to glow with golden energy .

Like a fiery arrow it shot into the distance, then stopped in mid-air . It turned its head back toward the two and chirped as though bragging at how much faster it had become .

Cloudhawk shouted after it impatiently . “Stop wasting time! Go find what we’re looking for . ”

Oddball’s portly body was incredible agile, and its field of vision had expanded considerably from before . What’s more, its eyes functioned like x-ray vision capable of peering through the mushroom caps below . Before long, it spied the remnants of an ancient city nestled in the forest .

They’d come here to find any relics that may have been discarded . An abandoned city was as good a place as any to start their search .

“Let’s go . ”

Cloudhawk and h.e.l.lflower set off after Oddball .

Aside from the spores, they noted that there wasn’t any other sort of plant life around . Oddly enough, even though the ground was barren these mushrooms still managed to sprout and grow humongous – just out of nowhere, springing up from the sandy dirt . There was no indication that they should have grown so large with so little nutrition .


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Strange was the only way to describe this place and its wildlife . Strange and inexplicable .

“It seems this world is in direct sunlight at all times . The earth is parched . I can’t see a drop of water anywhere . It appears this has forced the wildlife to adapt in strange ways – if I had to guess, the fungal surfaces are efficient solar energy collectors . See the wrinkles on the underside?”

Cloudhawk lifted his head to look at what h.e.l.lflower was talking about .

Where the exterior was smooth, the inner wrinkles beneath the mushroom caps undulated gently as though it were breathing . Like an animal .

“Its respiration rate is rather quick, suitable for gathering any moisture left in the air . In the same way our breathing works it is constantly exchanging oxygen for waste material . It is a natural energy reactor . You can almost feel the energy within it . Whatever it left in the soil it gathers up, and through some complicated chemical process converts it into the nutrients it needs to flourish . ”

h.e.l.lflower was almost muttering to herself while she examined the alien flora .

She felt like she’d wandered into a treasure trove of secret information . Cloudhawk, on the other hand, couldn’t care less . He was more concerned about the hidden dangers he knew had to exist . Seeing as this was a completely foreign ecosystem, who knew what sort of things existed here humans weren’t equipped to guard against .

h.e.l.lflower thoughtlessly wandered around, trying to look at everything at once .

“These spores have incredible research value . If they can grow in this environment, what’s to stop them from growing in the wastelands? The barren environment is similar . ” h.e.l.lflower quickly gathered several dozen mushroom samples and a large amount of spores . “Excellent . I’ll bring them back for experimentation . ”

Cloudhawk was getting better after his ordeals, but still wasn’t completely healed yet . Getting around was a slow and laborious process most of the time . Between his injuries and h.e.l.lflower stopping every few steps to gather samples, it was slow going . Eventually, however, they arrived at the ruins of whatever ancient civilization had abandoned this place .

Although it was clear these remains were very old, the dry air kept them largely intact . In fact, many of the buildings were still standing, which revealed that they were very similar in architecture to Skycloud .

Where did these ruins come from? What kind of culture had this been?


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Perhaps more importantly, what happened that caused them to disappear? What terrible power swept through? Was there really nothing left in this sun-scorched planet? Question after question worked its way through their minds .

And then…

Out of the corner of his eye Cloudhawk spotted a large group of creatures huddling in the ruins . They were odd and oblong, sort of like jellyfish . Tentacles slithered out from elongated bodies and crackled with electricity . One of the creatures slowly extended an appendage, and a streak ofl ightning blasted forth!

C-rrrACK!

The outsiders were sprinkled with dirt and a crater appeared inches before their feet .

Cloudhawk’s face fell . “d.a.m.n, that looks like it’d hurt . Get rid of them!”

h.e.l.lflower’s guns appeared in her hands in a flash . Shots rang out as she emptied her clips in the direction of their attackers . Gaping holes appeared in the jellyfish-like creatures’ bodies . They stopped their attack, but only so that they could begin to amalgamate together to form a monstrous thing a dozen meters tall .

What a freakish monster!

h.e.l.lflower was frozen in surprise . In the interim Oddball dashed toward it, piercing it through . Oddball moved so fast it was just a streak of golden light that sliced right through the jellyfish’s soft exterior . It came around for a second pa.s.s, diving head first into the creature .

The jellyfish rapidly began to shrivel up like it was being sucked up from the inside . Its outer membrane cracked, and after a few seconds it broke apart to waft away on the breeze like snow .

Cloudhawk watched, eyes narrowed . “It was made from mental power . ”

h.e.l.lflower had never seen anything like it . “What do you mean?”

The expression on his face was strange as he struggled to explain . “I’m not exactly sure how to describe it . It’s not like anything we’ve seen . It was like it was some kind of spirit ent.i.ty . Both physical and… not . Obviously we were able to kill it . ”

Strange… what was a creature like that doing here?

As the two of them pondered the question, more of the strange creatures were gathering around . Many were the jellyfish sort, but others were even stranger and harder to describe . Where they were all similar was that they floated through the air like gravity didn’t affect them . They were translucent, and looked mostly incorporeal . They were like the spirits of the lost civilization, haunting the ruins .

Although h.e.l.lflower was curious about the unknown ent.i.ties, now was not the time for experimentation . Without a second of hesitation her guns were spitting bullets once more, blasting through whatever tried to get near .

“There are too many of them . ” h.e.l.lflower’s face was grave . “We can’t stay long . ”

Cloudhawk knew they had to make the most of every second . Since stepping into the ruins he was able to pick out several signatures of nearby relics, but one area was particularly dense . He sent Oddball to go take a look .

The pudgy bird obliged, and upon reaching the area discovered a sizable basin . More like a crater, actually, where something very big had detonated . He didn’t have a lot of experience with them, but it looked like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion . It wasn’t hard to imagine that it was an ancient war that had spelled this civilization’s downfall . Oddball also spotted several of the spirit creatures hovering near the crater .

The creatures did not fear physical attacks, and could only be destroyed by a large onslaught of energy . Luckily they seemed to be particularly weak against divine beasts like Oddball . The little bird gobbled up the energy they were made of and left them with nothing .

Oddball flapped its stunted wings, causing grit and dust to be pushed out in all directions .

From what they could see this was what remained of a battle from long ago . Demonhunters probably crawled all over this place in the fight, as evinced by the many relics Cloudhawk could sense . Whatever terrible attack took place, and countless years in this harsh environment, had destroyed most of them . Those had no more anima to speak of and didn’t even resonate any longer .

But there were others . Cloudhawk sensed seven or eight without having to search very hard . Oddball picked up what it could with its beak and flew them back to its master .

Three were gathered in this fas.h.i.+on . But the strange spirit creatures kept coming, and eventually they would be overrun . In order to avoid having to fight off an infinite number of enemies, they were forced to travel back to their own dimension .

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