Periapt [Survival in the world of a Cursed CRPG, Progression, Crafting, LitRPG]

As Hollis worked, some words he had read so long ago began repeating in his head.

“S’pose you wanna know how it is I lost my teeth,” the farming woman had said.

How many times had he accidentally clicked that NPC, sending her into her long speech? It was her default dialogue, and if she didn’t have a part in a quest, she would repeat it every time he interacted with her. Somehow, he always found himself checking if she had something new to say, and she never did.

“S’pose you wanna know how it is I lost my teeth.”

Hollis laughed at the memory as he channeled his Blood into the root system he had been growing for nearly an entire day.

The plant wanted to grow. Triggering its Indeterminate Growth ability was easy. It wanted to reach out its fibrous little offshoots and drink up all the water it could get its roots into.

He could feel himself weakening as the plant began to spread across the floor, looking like some kind of dead Christmas tree, reaching farther toward the chasm on one side and farther under the door in the opposite direction, too.

He needed to take a break. The bruises on his hands had grown painful. If he stopped, however, the plant would wilt. It would shrink back to a shriveled little husk of its current form, spilling water on the floor. It had happened twice before, but he had managed to catch it in time.

The root system he was growing, after all, was dried and atrophied when he took it from the small forest of tree roots above. It wasn’t alive. Giving it Breath could allow him to activate its innate abilities and make it seem like it was, but in truth, it was dead.

With more experience, he might be able to give it Spirit to make it really take root and grow, but if he did that, controlling it might be an issue, so it was all a wash.

He stood above the growing taproot and willed it to grow further, as the words repeated in his mind, “S’pose you wanna know how it is I lost my teeth.”

“Oh, I get it now,” Hollis said, as if responding to that dialogue prompt about the teeth all these years later. “I completely understand.”

The NPC’s speech was meant to teach the player the perils of the Dead Man’s Feast, a horrific event that sometimes occurred when travelers of the westward trails would run out of things to eat. They would use Cultivation to grow food from seed, triggering its natural ability to sprout and bear fruit.

This would sate their hunger for a time, but it would also deplete their Blood, leaving them even hungrier the next day. Then the cycle would continue: grow food, lose Blood, eat food, regain a little less Blood, grow food again, and on and on.

Eventually, the settlers would die of starvation and malnutrition with full bellies and food spilling over their plates, a Dead Man's Feast.

Hollis knew how a person could lose their teeth and more this way, if they went too far and gave too much. He had to be careful.

Willo dutifully hovered over him as he worked, lighting the room and showing, in whatever way a lightning bug could, that he was concerned.

He had to stop, if only to drink some water. Luckily, he had conserved most of his canteen, and while Cultivation was hungry work, it was not drying him out because of all the water the roots had access to. He pulled back the canteen and took a large swig. Next, he reached into his backpack and grabbed a handful of berries and mushrooms, and swallowed those too.

He hoped that, with something in his system, the strange sensation of emptiness he felt would cease. And for a moment, it did.

He took a deep breath to let his lungs relax from the strain they were under and closed his eyes as he leaned up against the stone wall just to rest for a moment.

Everything was going to be fine. His plan would work. He would be out of the darkness soon. He just needed to keep moving ahead. The silence could have strangled him, but he found peace in it.

Until the drip. The sound of leaking water echoed through the darkness.

Anxiety rose up in him, and he jumped up to find the end of the root system, believing that the plant was already losing its hydration. It was far too soon for that to happen.

But when he found it, and Willo shone his light on it, he didn’t see any water coming from it. There was no leak.

Drip.

Where was it coming from? It wasn’t from the direction of the door. While the skeletons would occasionally get riled up, he didn’t hear water moving from that direction.

It was coming from closer to the chasm. In fact, as the drips started to get a bit more rapid, he realized it was coming from about halfway across the room, dripping from the ceiling.

It was so rapid he could see it now, a constant, even drip leaking down from the place where he had broken the root off the tree above, and falling to the floor.

At first, he wondered whether he could drink water from the roots of a tree. That thought faded once he saw where the water was going. It was forming a small stream leading back, further into the room, and down into the chasm.

“The room is slanted!” Hollis exclaimed.

He got down on the ground and looked at it. Willo flew down low, too, his light making the dip in the floor just that much more obvious. It wasn’t clear to the naked eye or from walking on it, but about halfway through the room, a subtle bend caused the floor to lean ever so slightly toward the chasm. Likely, the formation of the chasm itself was what had done it.

Hollis was ecstatic. The small stream of drips had just cut his workload in half. He was nearly done. All he would have to do was get the roots halfway across the room and then turn on the waterworks. Because of the slope, he wouldn’t risk flooding himself with the parasite-infected water. He didn't want to risk any more contact with that water than necessary.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He got back to work immediately, triggering the plant to grow ever so slowly toward the center of the room. The pain and blood loss were hardly bothering him now.

Blood ▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱ [5/10]

By the time he was finished, he looked at the system he had created and smiled. Now, he just had to see if his plan would work.

He breathed once more, giving the plant temporary life and triggering its Sap Ascent ability. It took a moment to start, but when it did, a small stream of water began pouring out of the broken end of the root and following the slanted floor into the chasm below.

As the water flowed through the plant, he found the roots grew hardier without even needing Blood. The nutrients and organic matter in the water were enough.

The stream grew until it was like a real water pipe.

[Archaeology lvl 2] You see a plant root being used for irrigation. This practice dates back thousands of years. Fossilized roots used for this purpose have been found in many parts of Periapt.

“I never said I was the first to think of it,” he said with a chuckle.

He continued giving it Breath, harnessing its power to drain the room beyond the metal door of any water the plant’s roots could find.

It took a long time for him to hear any change from the skeletons, but eventually they noticed that the flooded floors they loved to slide around on and the pool in the center of the room were drying up.

He could hear them panicking, searching far and wide for moisture. Their bones clacked violently on the tiles. It just so happened he knew exactly where they could find what they were looking for: the water elevator that had flooded the warehouse down the entrance hallway. It had its own small pool that the settlers had been using as a well.

He figured if he drained the water they had been living in, they would be forced to find a new home, just as the small rehydrated worm had.

After hours of panicked scrambling on the other side of the door, eventually the skeletons could no longer be heard at all.

He carefully cracked the metal door open. The roots he had grown prevented him from opening it much more than that anyway.

Willo flew through the crack, casting light all over the atrium where the skeletons had infested. Not one bone could be seen. The pool appeared empty as best as he could tell. The floors were not completely dry, but there was little standing water anywhere.

“Go crazy,” he whispered to Willo. The little bug complied, shooting light off in every direction, trying to rile up any remaining skeletons, but no bone rattles could be heard in response.

Had he really done it? Had the bones gotten up and run to the nearest water just like in the folk story?

He could hardly believe it. Even if his plan had worked, he needed to be quick and careful. If he was wrong about there being another exit, he had just doomed himself. After all, he had sent them toward the only known exit, even if it was his only real way to get rid of them.

He quickly gathered up his supplies and the little wooden bird. Then he took his hatchet to a piece of the sour gum root he had grown so he could carry it with him. He liked the idea of a walking stick that could find water.

He had to coax the door open further by slashing at the roots with his hatchet. They had spread out like many strands of coarse hair to find water in every direction. He quickly ran around the room, this time without having to run through water, and made it to the far west wall, where he theorized an exit to be.

He quickly ran down the large, dark hallway, headed in that direction.

Little fingers of light poked through the darkness up ahead.

He bid Willo to go dark just in case it was a reflection. It wasn’t. It was distant, though.

He continued on, and that is when he saw them.

Two large skeletons and several small pieces had attempted to use this route to find water. They had failed and gone dormant until he happened to walk near them.

He had limited options. His gun could stun them, but not kill them. His hatchet would take forever to get through them because, no matter how many pieces they were in, they could still attack.

The skeletons wormed their way forward, their skulls trailing behind their bodies as their feet led the way like heads of snakes.

He chose option C.

He took the section of sour gum root he had selected as material to craft a walking stick, and activated Sap Ascent, spraying nearly a gallon of water down the hallway in the direction he had come. The root shrank to a quarter of its diameter.

To his delight, the skeletons heard the sound of water and lost all interest in him. They ran past him down the hallway as he continued down his path toward the specks of light he saw in the distance.

The light was coming through cracks in a large pile of stone, stacked on top of each other and crammed with random objects, such as wooden chair legs, old books, and plain dirt. Was it a collapse that had left this mess?

No. This was a barricade. That meant people had come through here.

He began digging through the rubble, creating a hole big enough for him to crawl through, pushing aside old wood and stone until he broke through to the other side.

He pulled himself through the hole until he fell through the other side into the sunshine.

He looked up to see the barrel of a large, black cannon aimed right at his head. It was like something out of a civil war museum.

More than that, he saw a thin man holding an ignition device prepared to blow him to pieces.

There were more people. Women, children, and the elderly, all of whom carried weapons of one kind or another.

He found himself in what had once been a room in the facility, but due to some collapse opened up into a large plot of land inside the Turpentine Canyon. He could see the canyon wall across from him. He could hear the river down below.

There were a dozen people, perhaps. They wore simple cotton clothing, for the most part, almost like nightgowns. It must have been early morning. His sense of time was off.

It didn’t matter. He had found people. That was success as far as he was concerned.

“Hello,” he said calmly, raising his hands. “My name is Hollis Hood. I mean you no harm.”

The people didn’t seem sure, but they lowered their weapons a bit. The man holding the linstock that would ignite the cannon looked around from person to person as if seeking permission to shoot.

For a moment, no one said or did anything. Several of the people coughed. They were all sick and frail, Hollis realized. The man looking to blast him away with the cannon was missing a leg.

As if from nowhere, a woman arrived on the back of a horse, jumped off, and took a brief look at Hollis. She was older, probably in her fifties. She still had a few strands of blond hair in a sea of gray. Unlike the others, she was healthy and had seen the sun a great deal.

As she arrived, half a dozen potted plants came alive around him, their flowers aimed right at him like barrels of guns. He expected they did more than look like guns.

“Calm down,” she said as she turned around to lead her horse away. “He’s only a damn kazier, not a skeleton. We don’t have to kill him just yet.”

She looked at Hollis and said, “Repair the wall, then meet us down by the coop near the river. If you hurt anyone, you'd best know that I can do far worse to you.”

She hopped back on her horse and was gone before Hollis could get a word out. The people put their weapons back in a large trunk and began walking across the shattered room to a hallway on the other side, where they disappeared. They kept looking back at him. The children even seemed excited.

The man who had been ready to blast him with a cannon shrugged his shoulders apologetically and followed.

Hollis was left alone, a bit confused. It didn’t matter. His job was complete.

Your insatiable curiosity propelled you deep into the ruins of the enigmatic facility, driven by the hope of finding a holdout of resilient survivors. You cunningly wielded Cultivation and Prospecting to banish threatening foes and clear the path for further investigation. Well done. Having found survivors, your curiosity has been satisfied!

[Cultivation lvl. 3] -> [Cultivation lvl. 4]

[Investigation lvl. 4] -> [Investigation lvl. 5]

[Prospecting lvl. 2] -> [Prospecting lvl. 3]

[Archaeology lvl. 2] -> [Archaeology lvl. 3]

Hollis locked eyes with Willo for a moment. Then, he turned around and began fixing the barricade he had just broken. He really didn't want to make that woman angry.

End of Part One: The Lone Explorer.