Chapter Thirty-Nine - Bugology

Shorter chappy, sorry :(

The goal for October it to have 40 chapters of Black Avatar before the end of the month... I think we might just make it!

Oh... apparently I never posted the maps I made?

***

The next morning started with Cricket confronting Rosario at the breakfast table. “Where were you?” Cricket asked.

“What do you mean?” Rosario asked as she tried what passed for a scone in the inn. It was rather hard, but the reheated stew they were serving for breakfast served to soften it a little.

“I woke up, and no pretty elven lady was hugging me. Disaster! Crime! Disappointment of the decade! Nay, the century!”

Rosario rolled her eyes quite emphatically, though she couldn’t help but notice the way that Lucky blushed from her cheeks all the way to the roots of her hair.

“I rose to practice. I don’t need as much sleep as you might think, so I use the hours of the night where you two are resting to train.”

“You train through the night?” Lucky asked with the exact tone of someone who was considering doing the same.

“Yes. But you need rest. Raise your Constitution another hundred points and we’ll see if you can keep up.”

Lucky nodded, then the amount of levels that would require hit her and she paused. “Ah, I’ll do my best?”

Cricket smacked the table. “My one desire, my only one in all of my life, was to see you pull on those tight riding pants. Is that too much for a bug to ask?”

Rosario elected to ignore her. “We’re heading out early today. I spoke to some of the staff here, and some of the caravaneers, and we’re only about a day and a half away from Bramsloekr. That’s at caravan speeds. Seeing as how we’re a little faster on foot, I think we can make it to the city by evening, or at least out of the mountains.”

Lucky hummed. “We won’t have as much time for sparring, then?”

“We’ll find some time,” Rosario said. “I’ll keep my ears open for any monsters of an appropriate level for you two to fight as well.”

“Alright. Thank you, master!” Lucky said.

“Gag me with a spoon,” Cricket muttered. Then she stared at Rosario. “Actuall, no, on second though, thou are not to gag me with anything but your fingers.”

Fortunately, they were moving soon after, and Cricket’s chatter was swallowed up by miles of mountainous road. 

She had planned for a few encounters along the way, but the unfortunate nature of monsters spawns in the real world meant that there was no way to actually know when and how they’d happen.

Their first encounter was with [Cliff Vultures] who were these large, skin-covered birds that liked to swoop down from above and grab passers by along the edge of cliff-side roads.

Cricket nailed one in the head with a throwing knife, then cried as it went over the edge, knife embedded in its chest.

The cliff was easily a kilometre deep, and even Rosario wasn’t sure she wanted to brave that kind of thing. She might have tried a [Mage Hand] to grab the corpse, but it had disappeared entirely. 

Lucky had more difficulty with the monsters, but it was good practice to fight something fast and relatively agile and which came at her from a strange angle. Her lack of Dexterity really showed, but she kept at it, and after a while blind luck let her land a swipe that made one of them crash into the road, then it was a simple case of stabbing it a few times until it died.

Cricket pouted for the rest of the afternoon about her lost knife.

Rosario decided that she’d do something about it. In fact, they were all due for some slight upgrades when it came to equipment.

After lunch, they had an encounter with a group of some dozen [Pebble Gremlins] and a level 22 [Stone Golem] who had come to occupy the road. A caravan was stuck on the far side, the road too narrow to simply rush past the slow-moving monsters.

Rosario took the opportunity to teach Lucky an important skill: kiting.

“The term comes from the enemy’s movement,” Rosario explained as she walked backwards, hands folded at the small of her back while the entire group of [Pebble Gremlins] followed. Cricket was taking care of the larger golem on her own. “Are you familiar with kites?”

“I am,” Lucky said. “We’ve played with them before.”

“Good! So, the idea is that you’re the kite, and the enemy is the string. You want to keep them focused on you while staying out of their range of attack. Honestly, the term isn’t perfect, but it’s what people use.”

“I’ve never heard of it!” Cricket said.

“It’s... a foreign term,” Rosario excused. “In any case, at your level, I think even these weak monsters could overwhelm you.” The gremlins were slow, but heavy, and their grip was pretty solid. If they snuck up on someone, they could literally weigh them down then beat them to death. “This way, you can get them lined up, and then... attack the nearest.” She slipped forwards, caught one of them with the tip of a boot, then flicked it up and over the rest. It crashed on the ground behind the others, dazed but still alive.

Lucky took her turn, and she soon got the gist of it. She was less than graceful about it, and did stumble once, but she recovered in time. 

It took a while for her to kill all of the little monsters, but she managed it, even if she was a sweaty mess by the end of it.

No level, but that was expected. Rosario still hoped to see another level that evening, or early the next day.

And her wish came true. That evening, as they took their meal while walking, they encountered a trio of [Grubbers].

“Cousins!” Cricket cheered. The monsters were, indeed, bugs. They were of the six-legged sort, with flat snout-like faces. More akin to beetles than anything like Cricket. 

“Are they really?” Lucky asked.

Cricket laughed. “No! Not the monsters sort. But any proper civilized bug might be.”

“Oh... well, that’s nice. I... well, uh, I was wondering... you and master, are you...”

“An item? Definitely!”

“We’re not,” Rosario said. “We’re just... friends.”

“Right, of course,” Lucky said. “Forget I even asked. Um. I don’t know how insect folk, ah, do things, actually.”

Cricket stared, then her face morphed into a grin that promised trouble. “Do you need The Talk?”

“I was raised on a farm,” Lucky defended.

“Sure, sure, but it wasn’t an insect farm, was it?” Cricket asked. Before anyone could reply, she went on. “When two people really love each other, and are ready to bring assorted offspring into the world, they rent a nice room at a birthing home, or a convenient inn, or maybe a cave.”

Rosario didn’t like where this was going.

“Then the male-presenting one for that evening will then extrude their penial spear and stab the female of the evening through the abdominal wall.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Rosario asked.

Cricket started to make gestures, with her hips. “Then there’s the pumping of the internal organs and the exchange of fluids to fill the female’s inner cavities. That way, when she’s ready later on, she can prepare herself to lay a whole new generation. That’s a whole other thing, though. Usually for that you’ll want a birthing room, and honestly some potions to help with the egg laying because I’ve heard that it can be kind of weird the first time.”

Lucky had started going red, then blanched, and was now some shade of green. Rosario felt like she wasn’t far from that herself.

Then Cricket looked at both of them, paused, and broke out into gales of donkey-like laughter. “Oh! Oh! Thou should see thine faces! Haha!” 

“Ah... so that was all a joke,” Rosario said with a sigh. Then she hesitated. “That... was a joke, wasn’t it?”

“Hmm,” Cricket said, not answering. “Should we fight the [Grubbers]? I’ll take the two weaker ones, you can take that level 9! Aim for their undersides. These can’t fly, so try to kick them over!”

Cricket evaded all questions about bug-person biology, eventually letting Rosario know that if she wanted to find out more, she’d have to do it through personal experience, and that was enough for Rosario to drop the subject for the moment.

By early evening, with the sun nearly set, they came upon the valley where the city of Bramsloekr sat.

“Do either of you know any light spells?” Rosario asked.

“I know one,” Cricket said.

“Fantastic. I’ll cast a basic [Light] over the three of us, but if you could teach Lucky the basics, I'd appreciate it,” Rosario said.

Cricket gave her a look, but she did as asked. 

By the time they made it to the city, they were well past exhausted, but that was fine. It was one city closer to their final destination.

***