Chapter Forty-Six - Not Living

Hm... anyone here have a good grasp of BrE grammar? I really wanna spruce up the first 10-15 chapters of this before I post. You know, make a good first impression!

To hit my goal, I need to write 22 more chapters before the end of the month.

That isn’t gonna happen, but I will try! 

***

On the second day of their trip, Rosario had Cricket train Lucky with a few basic things, alternating as Lucky grew tired from one or the other.

The first of these were simple acrobatic exercises that they could do while on the move. That meant summersaults and cartwheels, which Cricket evidently found to be quite a bit of fun to pull off at a moment’s notice, but which Lucky...

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Lucky said as she stared up at the slightly overcast morning sky.

Rosario walked over and looked down at her. “Do what?”

“Spinning like that,” Lucky said. “Is it really necessary for a swordsman to know how to do a cartwheel?”

“No. You could very happily fight with both feet firmly planted at all times,” Rosario said. “But you won’t be the best at it. And if you get flipped over by a stronger opponent, then you’ll have no experience handling the disorientation.”

Lucky sighed, then accepted Rosario’s help getting back to her feet.

She... really wasn’t built for acrobatics. She had great endurance and was quick on her feet, and her strength overall was good. Lucky had a knack of sorts for learning sword forms and remembering them.

She also tended to trip over her own feet whenever she did a summersault. 

It slowed them down a little, but that was fine. The other exercise she had Cricket take the lead on was magic.

Rosario paid just as much if not more attention than Lucky as Cricket taught her one of the three cantrips she knew. She kept asking Rosario if it was necessary for her to be teaching it, but Rosario insisted.

Cricket’s lesson, unfortunately, wasn’t the most helpful. She did show the proper magical circle for a [Light] spell, which was one of the most basic of cantrips that anyone could learn, but her explanation for how to empower it involved sound-effects and vague descriptions of ‘feelings in your heart, like when a pretty girl’s skirt is picked up by a strong gust of wind.’ It wasn’t terribly helpful.

Lucky tried anyway. She managed to summon a faint light on the end of her hand by late morning, but her sudden elation broke her concentration and the spell flicked away.

They had lunch, setting up a small camp in the lee of a hill next to an overgrown roadway. A spot that had clearly seen use a few times before, judging by the stone firepit and old logs set up as seating. They had some perishable goods to eat before they went bad.

After lunch, and after Rosario refereed a quick spar between Cricket and Lucky, which Cricket won handily, they took off once more. She decided not to push Lucky too much, though... truth be told, she really wanted to see the young woman hit her fifth level. That would earn her one skill in the [Soldier] job, and it might be one that would make her life much easier.

The fact that Lucky, despite all of her effort and hard work, was still only level 4 after nearly a week... well, maybe there was something about this world that made gaining levels a little slower. 

She’d have to find an opportunity to test Lucky some more.

And fortunately, that came soon enough. 

They discovered an old, dried gorge along their path. It cut across the road they wanted to take, which forked. One path led north, into the mountains. A sign above indicated that it was the north route, and her discussions with Huron suggested that it was the safe path.

It was also a path that would add two days to their travels.

The right path went down into the gorge, which meandered around for several kilometres before climbing out into some valleys further to the east. 

She turned right, walking right towards the gorge. 

It wasn’t too long before they were walking on an uneven stone path, something that had clearly been cleaned up of larger boulders and debris but which had been left unmaintained for long enough that it was starting to be troublesome to navigate.

If they weren’t on foot, she feared that passage here would be nearly impossible. A cart would have to stop every few metres to chuck rocks out of the way.

“What’s that, up ahead?” Cricket asked.

There was something on the side of the road, a wooden chest? It was a little scuffed, with some moss growing on its side.

“Careful,” Rosario said, but Cricket bounced over to it anyway, then gleefully kicked it open.

A moment later Cricket was ten hops back, gagging and choking.

Rosario sniffed the air and felt her ears droop. “Well, that’s a smell,” she said. She breathed in through her mouth as she approached the box. It was filled with meat. “What... why would someone fill a chest with meat and leave it here?”

Lucky came over, entirely unbothered. “Hm. I think we should turn back.”

“Whyfore?” Cricket asked. “Are you scared of meat chests?”

“No. This is how you bait monsters,” Lucky said. “Toss rotting meat into an old sac and fling it somewhere far from people. When it eventually breaks open, the smell attracts monsters and wild animals. They fight over it, and the monsters keep full long enough not to bother anyone. It’s not great, but it’s one way to keep a monster at bay, at least for a while.”

“Strange place to drop your meat box,” Cricket said with a chuckle.

Rosario hummed, then looked around herself. The gorge had rather steep walls, clearly eaten through by decades of water which was long gone, though a tiny trickle of a stream remained. She imagined that in the right season, after heavy rains, it might fill up partway, but as it was, it was a passage with some trees and an ancient road and stony walls on the sides.

She had... a suspicion, but nothing to act on.

“Let’s keep moving,” she said. 

“What exercise is next?” Lucky asked.

“Keeping your eyes open,” Rosario said.

They discovered a second chest an hour later, tucked under some cut branches. It was unopened, and other than a peek within, they left it untouched.

“Remeber this, Lucky: Once is an event, twice a coincidence, and three times, is enemy action.”

She was proved correct as they came down and around a bend and discovered a man waiting for them. He was wearing a long leather coat and looked like he had been out in the wilderness for some time. Not dirty, exactly, but worn. His crooked smile was strangely charming, and she immediately suspected that the man had a decent number of points in Charisma.

“Ladies!” he shouted. “Hold right there, if you would please. We’re the civilized sort, so if you would be so kind as to empty your inventories on the nice flat stone next to you and leave all of your most precious belongings behind, then we’ll all be quite pleased and alive tonight, yes?”

She used [Inspect]

Leon Grayfin

[Highwayman] - level 49

She flicked her ears and noticed that there were more people off to their side, hiding behind a number of large stones. Three... no, four more people. She didn’t know what their levels and jobs were, but she imagined they were more of the same.

More concerningly was the scent coming from off to her left, within the forest. It was dead, rotting meat again, only this one smelled off in a way that she couldn’t place. There was also a strange, sickly magic wafting through the air.

“I think we’d rather not,” she said. 

“Oh? Do you trust me so little? Or do you think yourself able to win against me, my lady [Swordmaster]?” Leon asked.

She licked her lips. “I have not heard any reports of marauders in these parts. Only that they’re dangerous. No reports meant no survivors.”

“Hah!” he barked a laugh. “That’s not quite right, for a certain definition of survivor. Oh well. Boys!”

Two things happened at once. First, a rope went taut. It had been hidden along the ground, snaking behind rocks and under debris. As it went taut it pulled something in the forest and there was a loud crash behind a few trees.

Then something clunked open behind them, and even without looking she knew that another chest of rotten meat had opened.

The second thing was the appearance of three men, all of them standing and shouldering heavy wooden crossbows. All three aimed and fired.

Rosario felt the world slow to a crawl. Two of those bolts were going to miss outright, but the third was flying unerringly towards Cricket whose attention was off to their left, towards the woods.

Rosario stepped out and plucked the bolt out of the air.

“Lucky, Cricket,” she said. “Pay attention to the woods, please. I’ll handle the bandits.”

“Y-yes ma’am,” Lucky said. She fumbled at her scabbard but managed to pull out her sword, the real, sharpened one. 

From the woods stumbled a man, then a woman, than a child. Their skin was plaid, their eyes blank, and most had their throats slashed and clothes stained with long-dried blood.

Undead.

Truly, she preferred zombies through a monitor.

***