Kaelen had been walking for quite a while, looking around for shelter. He was getting tired now, especially since he hard drained almost all of his energy killing the Silt Swimmer earlier. Thankfully a bit of it returned after sitting in the mud for a while.
He adjusted the grip he had on the stone he was carrying.
'I need to find a place to rest.'
He reminded himself of the immediate goal while holding his new trusty rock, and yet despite having that 'weapon,' he made sure to stay alert around the mud pools.
The world was a monochromatic nightmare—rock, mud, and soil. There was no particular landmark to guide him. The only thing he knew was that when he landed here, he was facing forward, and so he continued in that direction.
Hours passed again and the dim light of the bruised sky began to fail, turning a deeper, more ominous shade of violet. The air that was just there was now starting to chill, and getting sick here was a way to weaken himself; he did not want to explore.
'Shelter... somewhere there has to be something nearby.'
And then he saw it.
There in the wall of one of the rock hills there was a cave opening that opened up like a wound. There was just one problem with it. A problem that made his eyes narrow
The cave was not empty.
The mouth of the cave opened up a meter before one of the mud pools, and a few of the Mud crawlers were making their way in.
There had to have been more inside the cave already.
'I need to get into that cave even more now.'
What could be the reason that those things were huddling together in a small cave? It was probably another horror, and he was too tired to fight again at night when human vision was limited.
He stood there and watched as the dregs of the group entered and then waited some more to see if any would enter. By now his heart had stopped beating wildly but his eyes still felt droopy, to say the least.
And now night was almost here; a few minutes before this place's sun left the sky.
'No other choice...'
He thought, having made up his mind.
What did he learn from all those fictional stories? If you wanted something, prove you had the strength to wield it.
He didn't have a plan. He had a rock, and he had something he wanted, and that was enough.
He walked to the entrance of the cave and stood outside and peered into it, barely able to due to the fast-approaching night and lightlessness of the cave itself.
And then he stepped in.
The moment he did, the last of the mud crawlers entered the scene, and he, who was not completely asleep yet, woke.
It was on the outermost edge of their sleeping pile and currently the only one that had any awareness, and so before it did anything
Kaelen struck it as hard as he could. A sickening crunch, and it was dead.
'So I was right!'
As he was leaning over the corpse of the mud crawler he killed in the morning, he noticed a bridge in the creature's exoskeleton between what could be considered the neck and the head.
Now that theory seemed to be true because instantly the head of the mud crawler separated from the body. The spine is now visible and cracked with blood and something else flowing out.
[You have slain a Dormant Beast, Mud Crawler.]
Unfortunately the others close by had woken up. The second beast lunged, and its pincers aimed straight for his neck, and the multitude of legs aimed to penetrate his chest or maybe at least grab onto his shirt.
He sidestepped, and it slammed into the wall and grabbed onto it. Immediately he grabbed the back end of it and swung it around and knocked the other one away, and before the rest moved, he slammed the one he was holding to the ground and used his other hand to bring down the rock and separate its skull and body.
[You have slain...]
He fought like an animal. Before any of the creatures got to close he kicked them, smacked them, or threw himself to the side so they would miss. Each time one missed and was out of sight needing to readjust, he attacked the one that was in his view
Out of sight, out if mind or something like that
[You have slain a Dormant Beast, Mud Crawler.]
[You have slain a Dormant Beast, Mud Crawler.]
[You have slain...]
[You have slain...]
[You have slain...]
It was a chaotic, sickening mess of flesh and breaking bone. Kaelen's leg was bitten, his hand was scratched, but he was alive, and finally there was one more left, unfortunately the trusty rock was a few steps away.
He didn't try to reach it, instead he reached forward and dug his hand into the central yellow eyes. But he did not stop reaching further and further until he felt something that was mushy and soft, the brain.
The silence returned which brought him comfort
The work of the day had taken its toll, and his vision was starting to fade. The last drops of adrenaline in his blood were used up, and he could no longer move. He didn't even have the strength to crawl away from the piles of corpses that used to be beasts. He collapsed right there, in the cave, his face pressed into the cold, damp stone.
But he had an inkling that nothing would enter the cave since it was probably known that the cave was a group home for a group of beasts. There was a pile of bones in a corner of the cave, and he felt others might not want to find out what the mud crawlers had done with it.
So he slept all through the night, waking up after hours with the sun shining into the cave entrance.
He stirred, pulling his cheek away from the mud on the floor and the brown blood that seeped out of the creatures' bodies.
Contrary to his expectations of feeling rested, every muscle in his body felt as though it had been replaced by rusted iron. The scratches on his body burned a little bit too.
He sat up, his vision swimming. The light of the morning filtered through the cave entrance, illuminating his kills.
'I'm still alive.'
He tried to swallow, and he felt the dryness of his throat. It had been a day and a half since he had drunk anything.
'Maybe I shouldn't have thrown that bottle away...'
He forced himself to his feet and took in the area around him. His legs felt like jelly. He stepped over the remains of the Mud Crawlers and walked out into the wasteland. The terrain had not changed. It was still a brown hell.
'No water at all... no dew on trees or streams anywhere...?'
There were no trees at all, nor were there any streams. Just the rocks and more dirt.
"There has to be something,"
He spoke out loud this time; the remaining mud crawlers must have been a distance away since those close to him must have come to the cave yesterday.
"The spell... it wouldn't put me in a world where survival is impossible. Right?"
But the spell didn't answer. It wasn't a guide; it was a judge and it was probably judging him pretty harshly right now.
He spent the next four hours wandering. He tried digging into the lower silt flats, hoping to find a water table, but his fingers only met packed, frozen clay that dirtied his fingernails. He tried wiping his hands on the smoother stones, hoping for a hint of condensation, but they only felt like sandpaper, bitter minerals, and salt, making his thirst even more annoying.
And after a while the thirst began to bother him.
A human could survive three days at the best without water. Right now, an entire day had passed. Not to mention that value could not be used on him since he had just strained his body greatly so he definitely needed water
'I have to find something soon. With all the hunting and exploring... 2 days, much less 3 will be a blessing.'
He looked at the horizon, his mind beginning to wander. He thought of the kitchen back home—the cold water from the dispenser, the fruit bowl on the counter. The faces of the people who had betrayed him blurred with the jagged shapes of the rocks.
It was not odd that this happened. When he was on the street, Kaelen often thought about how convenient going home would be like instead of begging, but he never did. They chased him away and he did not want to go back.
The thought was a small spark in the cold dark of his mind.
By midday, the sun reached its peak, and Kaelen grew thirstier but until he found a water source, he was not going to travel further away from the cave where he could go to rest. Like what he was doing now.
Then there was a light bulb that went on in his head.
The mud crawlers would have needed water and food. If they hunted creatures for food, they would have needed to eat AND drink, and how would they get water with no water around?
'Mud is both water and sand...'
He woke up with a groan and turned, walking into the cave, grabbing his shoes, and taking them with him.
'I'm dying. I'm actually dying of thirst in a cave filled with water.'
The irony was a bitter pill he couldn't even swallow because his throat was too swollen. After looking for a source and trying all those little experiments, the night was coming again.
He sat down against the wall, his back lying against it with a corpse in front of him.
"Where is it..."
he wheezed, his fingers trembling as he began to dig into the gelatinous mass of the creature's chest area.
The Mud Crawler's biology was an affront to nature. It had flesh, yes, but under the exoskeleton it had a thin layer that was supposed to act as skin, and inside of it were the real problems. There were organs in it that he could not even recognize.
As he continued to tear through the body, a thick, brown slime oozed out, smelling of sulfur and stagnant ponds.
Then, he found it, tucked deep within the central mass was a pulsing, translucent sac.
'A filtration gland'
It looked like a bloated, leathery lung, veined with sickly brown capillaries. In the novel, the bodies of nightmare creatures were often toxic; this was a minor detail, a bit of flavor text about the ecology of the Dream Realm.
And now it was going to be Holy Grail or his bane.
Kaelen ripped the organ out with his bare hands. It was warm, and Kaelen felt it would have been warmer if it had not been from a day-old corpse. He could see liquid sloshing inside, filtered from the surrounding muck to keep the beast's internal "gears" lubricated.
He hesitated for a second.
'If I die from this, then water won't be a problem anymore, and neither will food...'
He bit into the leathery skin of the gourd. It didn't tear easily; it felt like chewing on a rubber tire. When it finally snapped, a jet of lukewarm, viscous liquid shot into his mouth.
It was the most disgusting thing he had ever tasted.
It was thick, like unflavored gelatin, and tasted of old copper, rotten eggs, and bitter alkaline salts.
It coated his tongue in a film of slime that made his stomach instantly heave. His body wanted to reject it, to vomit the foul slurry back onto the cave floor.
'Drink it!'
His mind screamed, overriding his gag reflex.
He forced himself to swallow.
One gulp.
Two gulp.
Three
He squeezed the gland like a wet rag, draining every drop of the filtered "water" into his parched throat. It was salty, making his thirst momentarily spike, but as the moisture hit his system, the dizzying fog in his brain began to lift indicating he was being hydrated.
Then however he gagged.
A large stream of blood spilled from his mouth and before the confusion could settle in, the pain did first. He gritted his teeth not wanting to scream just in case he drew something here to his cave.
His eyes, widened so much that he felt they were about to pop out, looked at his hands which were clutching the ground. His veins were all brown and he could see them all over his body.
'Poison...?!'
Another spout of blood spilled as he coughed.
He felt weakness creep into his body and he fell flat on the ground, face first. Laying there he could only watch as his vision blurred.
'No...!'
He had no strength to grit his teeth but his pupils narrowed in response to his resolve.
'No, I'm not dying here....!'
As he groaned in pain a strange change began to occur in his body. A response to his 'Unmoving' nature. The brown poison that was flowing though his veins began to slowly dissipate, lightening and lightening until they returned to normal
Kaelen laid there and then closed his eyes.
'This is the second night that I fell unconscious on the ground...'