168 - When In The Sewers

It was past noon when Alexandra completed her daily quest. The sky was clear, and the sun was warming her through her coat. Summer had long turned into fall, and winter was approaching rapidly. She was glad not to be living in Kator anymore. The good seasons were miserable enough there.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Willow asked, walking beside her with Nara in tow. “There has to be a reason nobody cleared the sewers until now.”

“Obviously. It’s disgusting.”

“I don’t know if that’s it…”

“Can Speck stay with us?” Nara asked.

Alexandra looked at the girl with a smile. “I’m sorry, I need Speck’s help.”

The entrance to Balrum’s sewers was a tunnel. There, a clear river flowing from the mountains surrounding the basin flowed under the city. It should have been flowing, anyway. The mouth of the tunnel was lost in the middle of a pond of stagnant water.

“It stinks!” Nara pinched her nose.

Willow grimaced and looked at Alexandra with a face that made words superfluous.

“Don’t worry. I got this.” Alexandra waved her friend’s concerns away.

Willow exhaled, inhaled, and immediately regretted it, the rotten smell of trash and waste filling her nose. She coughed. “I know you won’t listen, but be careful.”

“It’ll be fine.”

Willow and Nara walked away.

“Well, Speck, it’s just you and me now.”

“...”

“Not feeling talkative today? All good.”

She summoned her journal.

Complete a task from Balrum’s council (1/1) -> Quest Completed: +10 exp, +1 STR

Daily Quest Streak: 131 -> 132

Sewer Danger – Event Quest

Clear the elementals living in the sewers of Balrum (0/1)

Reward: 50,000 CP

Failure condition: Someone clears the sewers before you

The quest wasn’t forthcoming with information. There was no mention of how many elementals were in there, nor how strong they would be. Alexandra figured they couldn’t be too strong. Otherwise, the council would have dealt with the issue long before she got there. The councillors may not like wading in dirty water, but Alexandra doubted they’d let Gold rank elementals prosper under their town.

“How do we get in there?” she muttered, looking at the stagnant water pooling around the tunnel entrance.

The good news was that the water was not truly stagnant. The mountain stream still flowed. Otherwise, the entire area would have flooded, or the stream would have moved beds.

I guess there’s no escaping it.

She stepped into the water.

The cold, cloudy water swirled around her ankles, thick with a slick layer of sludge that clung to her boots. As she waded deeper, the clear mountain stream completely surrendered to the grey, opaque surface of the pool. Small bubbles broke the surface, releasing fresh pockets of air that made her eyes water.

Before her, the archway of the tunnel opened like a dark, toothless mouth. Stonework stained with algae and crumbling at the edges framed the entrance, nearly half-submerged. Black moss hung down from the opening like damp cobwebs, brushing against the murky mirror of the pond below. Beyond the entrance, the light faded almost instantly into pitch blackness.

“Wanna scout ahead?” she asked.

“No.”

“Come on. It’s dark in there.”

“Dirty.”

“You’re not tangible. You can’t get dirty.”

“Can.”

Alexandra rolled her eyes and turned on her magical light—a simple, unfocused cast of Rays Of The Sun—and walked toward the entrance. The water reached her thighs before she made it inside.

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The archway cast flickering shadows along the damp stone walls. Once past the threshold, the water level dropped to a shallow, murky trickle, barely reaching above her boots. The real challenge wasn’t depth, but traction: a thick coat of foul-smelling slime covered every inch of the stones, threatening to send her face-first into the sludge with every step.

“See? It’s hardly even wet in here,” Alexandra said, her voice echoing down the curved passageway. “Perfect time to come out.”

“No.”

“You don’t even have feet!”

“Foul. Place,” Speck replied, its voice flat and unyielding from inside her consciousness. “Stay. Inside.”

She huffed. A plume of cold condensation rose into the stale air. The light of Rays Of The Sun glinted off black roots bursting through cracked masonry.

As she approached a corner, a wet, repetitive noise reached her ears.

Sloshing carefully forward, Alexandra reached for the hilt of her sword, her wet boots squelching loudly against the stones.

She peeked around the bend. A slime elemental. Bronze.

She dispatched it with Drain Life and collected the source.

Alexandra walked deeper into the sewers, slaying the few slime elementals on the way. Every time she reached an intersection, she picked left.

By the time she turned left for what felt like the hundredth time, the initial thrill of the contract had completely evaporated.

The narrow stone conduits blurred into a seamless, unending nightmare. Brick wall, dripping archway, shallow stream of filth, repeat.

Another mound of jelly-like grey ooze slithered out of an overhead drainage pipe, landing in the stagnant water with a plop. Alexandra didn't even bother drawing her blade. She lazily flicked her wrist, channeling Drain Life. A thread of mana latched onto the beast. The creature shuddered, withered into a dry husk, and dissolved back into the muck, leaving behind its source.

“Bronze rank. Again,” she muttered, rolling her shoulders to loosen the growing tension in her back. “Are you kidding me?”

Silence.

“Hey. Speck. You seeing this?” Alexandra snapped, her voice bouncing uselessly off the slick masonry. “I’m so bored.”

“Get. Out,” Speck replied, its mental voice muffled, as if it were trying to physically pull back into the deepest parts of her body. “Vile. Horrible.”

“I didn’t know you were so precious.” Alexandra smiled. “Come on. I’ll give you a nice rock.”

“Don’t. Care.”

“About rocks? You changed.”

“No,” Speck said. “My. Rocks. Better.”

“It’s just water!” Alexandra threw her arms up, instantly regretting it as her light spell wobbled, throwing long, erratic shadows down the endless corridor ahead. “You could literally float above the water, point out the elementals, and we’d be out of here in no time.”

“Will. Not. Float. In. Sewage.”

Alexandra rolled her eyes. “Unbelievable.”

I shouldn’t have accepted that stupid quest.

Her breath caught as she almost slipped on wet, slimy mold. Alexandra slammed her heels down to push back, but the stones beneath the murky water gave way to a deep, submerged drainage rut. Sure Footing flared, attempting to force balance, but the sheer volume of slick, gelatinous mold coating the stone was too much.

She slammed shoulder-first into the wall to keep from falling into the stagnant pool. The rough brick scraped through her coat, saving her from a face-first dive into the sewage, but the impact knocked the breath from her lungs.

Sure Footing my ass.

It was her only balance and movement skill if she excluded Running and Swimming, which weren’t applicable in her situation. It was helping her not fall face-first in the slush, but the limits of the common skill were starting to show.

Alexandra hadn’t managed to upgrade it to uncommon. She was already half-considering picking up a second common skill to supplement it. She certainly had enough contribution points to afford one after last night.

However, she was starting to worry that her skill list was getting too long. She already didn’t have time to train them all. She’d almost stopped practicing enchantments, herbology, and many others. Perhaps working toward a skill merge with Sure Footing would be worthwhile, but she decided to hold off for now.

The smell of the tunnels got better as she got used to it, then it got worse again. Putrid and rank, even Alexandra couldn’t ignore it.

“Anything nearby?”

“Yes. Elemental.”

“What type?”

“Can’t. Tell. Never. Seen.”

She nodded, happy that Speck was finally helping. “By the way, do you think there are Darkness Elementals down here?”

Alexandra felt anticipation rise through her link with the familiar.

“I. Hope.”

She was about to turn a corner when her skills blared an alarm inside her mind. She stepped back just in time to avoid a rotting clump of sloshing brown sludge that crashed into the stone where Alexandra had been standing a split second before. It splashed a thick, foul-smelling liquid across the walls. The impact sent a heavy wave of rancid warmth into the chill air, an overwhelming stench of pure, decaying waste that made her gag instantly.

She lunged backward, her heart hammering against her ribs as her boots squeaked on the slippery floor.

From the center of the pile, a towering, amorphous mass reared up. It oozed in ripples, continuously absorbing and shedding clotted chunks of undigested matter, debris, and grease. Two deep, hollow pits pressed into the front of its body in a grotesque imitation of a face, from which a dark slurry dripped down its bulk. As it shifted forward with a wet thud, the air around it grew so thick with the reek of stagnant latrines and rotted filth that her vision momentarily blurred.

Alexandra scrambled for her footing, holding her sleeve over her nose and mouth as her stomach violently churned. “What is that?”

“Kill. It,” Speck hissed.

The creature let out a low, gurgling sound and raised two dripping pseudopods of brown muck, ready to crush her under the weight of Balrum’s waste.

“I’ll fucking burn this fucking place down,” Alexandra cursed, reaching for the hilt of her sword and preparing to turn Rays Of The Sun against the elemental.