Today's Earth date: December 21, 1991

It hasn't stopped raining for three days. All of my clothing and gear are soaked through. We can't keep a fire going, and navigating in here sucks. We're following the road we believe leads to the Earth Temple, but we don't know how much farther we have to go.

And that's just to reach the surface entrance. Apparently we have a long underground hike after that.

We're talking about turning back and trying again with better gear. If we're lucky, Iomallach will give us an entourage to the Temple like Cuan did, make the travel a little easier and hopefully less wet.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

The Mudsville alarm system was crude but effective.

When one of the watchmen–or women–spotted a monster, they yelled, "Wake the fuck up!" And then whoever heard the yell, repeated it, and on and on the chain of alerts went until everyone was aware they were under attack. In the background of all the shouting, strange high-pitched chirps echoed out of the jungle from all around, repeating rapidly. To Wayne, they sounded like the squeak of wet rubber.

Wayne sat up in his bedroll, his mind telling him to leap into action to help, but the sudden movement made him queasy. He winced, groaned, and tried to ignore that he was still very drunk.

"You okay?" Armond asked, grabbing his own weapons a few feet away from Wayne.

"I'm drunk."

Armond closed his eyes, and then a horizontal beam of light ran from Wayne's feet up to his head. In an instant, his mind was clear and his body pain-free.

"What was that?" Wayne asked.

"It's called 'Too Bad Toxin.' It's from Tunnels & Trolls. Cures poisons."

"Is that how you're never hungover?"

"Recently, yes. Before that was just a result of years of practice."

"You've been holding out on us," Wayne said, pointing an angry finger at Armond. "Don't think we're done talking about this just because there are monsters."

Armond laughed and used the spell on the rest of the party.

Fergus had similar choice words for the cleric when he had the same realization as Wayne.

Probe told Wayne that the invaders approached Mudsville from the south. He didn't have time to equip any of his protective chainmail, including the fashionable safety stockings, so he knew he couldn't chase enemies back into the jungle if they fled. Knowing his party members were similarly unequipped, he sent a mental message to everyone reminding them that running face-first into a coral tree in the dark would be unpleasant.

The southern edge of town wasn't far from where the Zeroes set up camp, but most of the village was already there. No one wore any armor, but Wayne saw dozens of spears and bows. Where the boys had simple sharpened sticks in their fight against the manacondas, the men and women of Mudsville wielded weapons with coral speartips. The coral retained much of its character, making every weapon unique in its color and gnarled, organic shape.

Similarly, Mudsville arrowheads were also fashioned from coral, and Wayne spotted a few coral daggers as well, though the majority of those were sheathed.

A few ratmen had already emerged from the jungle. Each of them had foam dripping from their mouths and a scattering of deep slices where they brushed against coral in their charge through the jungle. Ratmen never looked particularly intelligent, but this variety was visibly crazed. Their movements were violent twitches, and they seemed incapable of any level of self-preservation.

When they emerged from the undergrowth, they continued their charge at whatever target was nearest at the time.

Wayne and the Zeroes took up positions among the Mudsville villagers to help hold the perimeter. Though the locals knew the jungles well, they also saw the wisdom in maintaining their formation instead of charging blindly into the wilderness.

Running Back.

The Running Back robot from Cyberball sped straight into the jungle. Wayne watched its dot on the HUD when it disappeared from view. Running Back moved far more quickly than Linebacker bot, and where the former never slowed, the latter would stop and hold a defensive position when it encountered enemies.

The Running Back bot seemed to attract enemies more rapidly than its teammate, but since it continued charging, it drew mobs away. Linebacker bot's habit of holding position made it a sort of disposable tank with the Taunt ability where Running Back bot kited enemies.

Drawing ratmen away from the charge was fine, though, and a few blinked out along the way. Wayne assumed those rats had killed themselves on coral, but then Running Back bot blinked out too. He likely suffered the same fate.

While Wayne used Running Back bot, Fergus had summoned an Earth Elemental to help Hector tank. The party's barbarian diced up any rat that got close while the Earth Elemental punched rats in the face with a fist made of dirt. At the same time, Margo fired an endless stream of arrows, and Armond put his focus on protecting villagers. Wayne saw Deban air barriers as well as a few instances of the highly defensive Pentagram spell from Tunnels & Trolls appear periodically around shirtless spearmen.

Like Hector, Wayne's sword never stopped moving, but the kills weren't swift enough to trigger the Morale bonus. That was fine. The ratmen weren't breaking through to the town, and that was all that really mattered.

Something felt off about the consistency of the Mudsville defensive line, though. The ratmen charged with near-predictable regularity instead of using swarm tactics to truly capitalize on their numbers. If they pressed that advantage, Mudsville would have been in real trouble.

A few dots at the edge of Wayne's HUD never charged. They seemed to pace back and forth, like generals commanding soldiers from the backline. Those must have been the leader rats who used protective magic.

The longer the battle continued, the more Wayne was sure something was wrong. On a hunch, he sent Skycat across the village, flying low to avoid branches. Camera wasn't great in the dark, but it still labeled the monsters in view. He counted three "ratmen rogues." Then a projectile struck the fighterplane and it spiraled into a wagon.

That confirmed Wayne's suspicion. The attack from the south wasn't an invasion. It was a distraction.

"Hold the line. I'll be right back."

Still lacking the space to Blitz, Wayne ran on foot. His high dexterity made him swift and nimble but not nearly as fast as dash-flying.

He found two of the ratmen rogues at the north end of town coming out of a house. They carried either end of a large rounded box with one side covered by dials. They squinted when the beam from Light shined on them.

Wayne heard the shattering of glass behind him. He managed to turn slightly before a twisted dagger drove through his shoulder blade. Blood sprayed out of his right pectoral when it burst through.

He instinctively checked his hit points. Out of his possible 249, he had 29 left.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Holy crap. Defensive Screens had just saved his life from Backstab damage.

As Personal Foul screeched a whistle in the ratman's ear, Wayne triggered a combination he had yet to have the misfortune of testing. In a succession so rapid as to be simultaneous, he cast Castling on himself, and then Fanbi enhanced with his new Super ability.

Fanbi drained hitpoints from the ratman rogue, but layered with Super from ESWAT, the spell activated a dozen times within a few seconds. At the same time, the fortifications of Castle swiftly built a barrier around the Zero Hero.

He called the combo "Panic Attack."

Wayne's health sped up to 159 and the ratman rogue shriveled into a mummified skeleton.

Meanwhile, his summoned castle walls on either side of himself were already in pieces.

The Crosshairs at the edge of Wayne's peripheral vision flashed. He triggered Fire to surround himself with revolving flames. That was enough to hold one of the remaining ratmen rogues at bay, but the other got through. Another knife pierced Wayne's skin, this one through his left arm.

But it wasn't a Backstab.

His hitpoints fell to 97.

Wayne wanted to respond with Fire a Broadside, but decided against loosing a cannonball in the middle of a town filled with civilians, and he decided against Dynamite for similar reasons. Instead, he swung his sword at the rat with the knife and hit Upsidaisy on the other to keep it occupied for a few seconds. The grounded ratman easily dodged and slipped out of range, tossing its bloody blade from one hand to another as it planned its next attack.

Damn. Wayne hadn't missed with his sword in a long time.

Easy Out.

Wayne's backward dash took him beneath the ratman rogue coming back down from Upsidaisy. It twisted, trying to escape Wayne's sword swinging upward. Having no solid surface to push off of, the efforts were futile.

The ratman, impaled on Wayne's blade, raised a knife, preparing to stab the Zero Hero as its dying triumph. Wayne hit the monster in the face with two Missiles back to back. As he peeled the corpse from his weapon, the last ratman rogue fled.

Wayne fired another Missile.

It missed, splintering through the wall of a shack. He winced, hoping an innocent person wasn't hiding on the other side.

The fleeing ratman turned a corner, and his red dot disappeared from Wayne's HUD again.

Running after the enemy, Wayne saw no sign of the rat when he cleared the same corner. Nothing on his HUD. No sounds. No tracks.

He searched the area on foot for a few more seconds, checking over his own shoulder with paranoid consistency. The ratman rogue was gone.

"Everyone doing okay?"

"Haven't seen a new rat in a few seconds," Armond answered. "It might be over."

"Let me know if that changes."

Wayne was hesitant to leave the immediate area. If the southern assault was a diversion, the real target must have been the box the rogues were carrying. Leaving it unguarded seemed unwise.

Looking at it more closely, the box was indeed covered in dials on the one side, and it was in bad condition. Only a few of the dials were relatively intact, though the mechanisms behind their cracked glass were either filled with water or overgrown with moss. The box itself was fractured and also coated in blankets of mold and other kinds of growth.

Resource Values.

General Motors TBF Avenger Cockpit Panel (Ruined), Average Value of 19.7 Iguana Kabobs.

Whoa.

This was the interior of a fighter plane? That definitely had to be from Earth. Even though flight was a very new part of human history, Wayne couldn't say how old the panel was. It definitely wasn't modern, but beyond that, he didn't know when between the years of 1940 and 1990 the panel was built.

Wayne still pondered what that meant when Fergus and a longhaired Mudville citizen approached.

"A few injuries," Fergus reported, "but no casualties. Armond is tending to the wounded."

"Well done," Wayne answered. "The rats were trying to steal this when I found them."

"You're sure?" the Mudville man said. "That piece of scrap?"

"What do you know about it?" Wayne asked.

"Belongs to Kenny. They're a bit of a collector. Got all sorts of junk and are a damn good cook."

"Where did it come from?"

"Kenny claims it came from the Dead Zone, but no one really believes that."

"Dead Zone?"

The man yawned and gently rocked like a tree in the wind. He was definitely still drunk. "Cursed corner of the Cuts that attracts a lot of wannabe treasure hunters. Anyone who claims to have been there is a few weasels short of a parade, if you ask me."

"Cursed how?" Wayne asked.

"How you think? Bad things happen."

Wayne's and Fergus' eyes met. Neither of them had read or heard anything about a cursed area of the Cuts during their research nor had they seen anything about objects from Earth. The cursed part of the Cuts sounded like a lead.

"Could you show us on a map?"

"Sure, but maybe in the morning? Late, late morning? I'm still two flags away from Sunday. Gotta get shuteye, you know?"

Wayne said that was perfectly fine and apologized for keeping the man up. He said not to worry and staggered off into the darkness.

Squatting next to the cockpit panel, inspecting it with Light, Wayne asked Fergus if he had ever seen an artifact from Earth as large as this one.

"Vanilli's boombox was the biggest," he answered. "I know the size of this is intimidating, but don't let it skew your idea of what a normal size is. What we've seen before this is the typical size of an Earth artifact, and those are plenty big enough to make someone happy."

"I understand," Wayne said with a chuckle. "This discovery has some serious implications."

"How do you mean?"

"All of Vanilli's treasures were from gate leaks in the Water Temple, right? The other Temple gates probably have the same issue."

"I'm with you thus far."

"I don't see any of the Heroes lugging this up from the bottom floor of a Temple."

Fergus raised both of his eyebrows. "Intriguing observation. Therefore, this may be a result of a planar leak on the surface."

"Yep."

"And the rats knew it was here and went to significant trouble to try and acquire it," Fergus added. "If we hadn't seen a ratman building new monsters, I would have said rats steal all sorts of things for no other reason than to have them, but now I have a hard time not seeing it all as deliberate and calculated."

"Agreed."

"I don't mean to make assumptions, but I hope you wouldn't try using a planar leak to get back to Earth."

"I get why the Chosen Heroes write a lot about wanting to go home," Wayne said. "They were kids. They hadn't really gotten a chance to live yet."

"You don't want to return?"

"I miss a lot of things about Earth, sure, but I had my chance and squandered it. A redo? I don't think I can make the most of my chance here if I keep pining for another world entirely."

"I could understand if you wanted to go back."

"I appreciate the thought, but I promise I'm not itching to hatch an escape plan," Wayne said as he stood. He expected to feel tired, with a deep longing to return to his bedroll for a few more hours. Instead, he felt rested, as if he had the perfect amount of rest prior to the skirmish.

"I have an unrelated request," Fergus said.

"I'm listening."

"Can we settle in at the Blackwell estate before we go bushwacking through the jungle again?"

Wayne assured Fergus they would do just that.

When conversation faded, Wayne opened his system to look at two unlocks he earned fighting the ratmen rogues. Both abilities were passive, and the first–his fifth unlock from Phantasy Star II–seemed straightforward:

Maruera Gum – Have some of this when you're nervous – or when you want to swim underwater.

The other was a classic move from Chess 2100:

En Passant – This French phrase Is used for a special pawn capture. It means "in passing," and it occurs when one player moves a pawn two squares forward to try to avoid capture by the opponent's pawn.

Wayne hoped Maruera Gum was as good as it sounded. Breathing underwater could be incredibly useful, even if just as a safeguard. The sea monster they fought outside of Cuan could have dragged him under at any time, and this ability would have kept him alive. Testing exactly how Maruera Gum functioned, however, sounded awful and like a really dumb way to die from drowning.

As for En Passant, he knew what that meant in the context of moving and capturing pawns in chess but had no ideas for how the system might adapt it. In chess, En Passant seemed to Wayne like a way to balance the move-two squares option available to pawns, preserving the risk of moving a piece into danger even if the pawn merely passed through the vulnerable diagonal tile instead of ending on it.

He added those abilities to his growing list of strange topics to ponder and set to work breaking down camp.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.