[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 24 – When the Beet Drops

Shrubley tumbled through the swirling transplanar well, crossing into another realm. The shimmering walls of watery energy twisted like a bore drilling between worlds.

Ahead, he could just barely discern Slyrox falling as well.

He didn’t know what awaited him and his friends. He was afraid, but he didn’t cower.

He held firmly onto his shield and sword. He would need them soon enough.

Quest Failed: The Manor’s Mystery

Caught by the Count and his dutiful Igor, you and your group have been thrown into the manor’s dungeons. Unable to break out of your imprisonment, you learned what the Imposter Count had in store for the region, but were unable to stop him.

Objectives:

Escape the manor 0/1

Escape with your full party (Cal, Smudge and Slyrox) 0/1

Optional Objectives:

Discover the secret behind the manor’s dark change 1/1

Defeat the Count 0/1

Rewards:

Class Experience

[Nature Essence Gem]

Adventurer Accolades (Uncommon)

There was nothing to be done for it. He had failed a quest, and for the first time, too.

Despite that, Shrubley had completed one of the optional objectives. The Imposter Count sure had been talkative, and so were the snake guards.

He could feel a surge of faint power coming from the experience gained from that single objective, so he had at least earned something for his efforts.

I’ll take it, Shrubley thought, eager to become even a little bit stronger.

Power was the difference between victory and defeat. And he had been too weak this time.

He wanted another go at the Imposter Count. He would survive this. He intended to be strong enough to get the task done. Even if he had failed the quest, he would not fail Taamra.

Shrubley wanted to save the Haalften lands and Taamra village both, even if none of them were ever the wiser.

You didn’t need fame and glory to one day become the strongest S-Grade Adventurer after all. Though it might happen along the way, that just wasn’t part of Shrubley’s dream and goal.

The light closed in around him, shrinking and twisting until Shrubley felt like he was back out in the night air. It must still be dark, even if they had spent several hours in the dungeons of the manor.

And then he saw it. The cobbled streets of a town quickly coming to meet him. For a moment, Shrubley wondered whether he was falling toward the ground, or the ground was rising up to meet him.

Then he realized it made no difference either way. He was going to be smashed to flinders on those hard stones.

Smudge stretched and encapsulated Shrubley in a ball of pink slime that made him bounce with a faint sproing sound when the ground came up to slam Shrubley in the face.

“Where are we?” Shrubley asked quietly, his voice muffled by the slime’s all-encompassing hug.

“Don’t know,” Smudge said, succinct as ever. The slime’s tiny voice completely surrounded Shrubley, not too loud but coming from everywhere at once.

Which made sense, considering Shrubley was protected inside the slime.

There was no sign of Slyrox in the overgrown town square as Smudge shrank back down to his usual palm-sized stature and settled onto his head like a tiny, smiling pink crown.

“Thank you,” Shrubley said, readying his sword and shield. This place looked oddly familiar.

“Could use with hand-lending!” cried a koblin’s voice.

Shrubley looked up and saw the diminutive koblin clinging to the edge of a tiled roof. The building looked ready to fall over at the slightest breeze. It was cracked and badly damaged by some strange purple-black ivy that was growing all over it.

Rushing to her aid, Shrubley dove at the last minute to catch the koblin just as her mittened hand slipped free of the roof. She landed on his springy branches and bounced hard onto the cobbles.

She got up, muttering to herself and rubbing her backside.

Shrubley groggily helped the koblin to her feet and staggered around just in time to see Cal screaming like a white comet headed straight for the fountain overgrown with weeds and strange plants.

Oh no, I have to do something! Shrubley thought with dismay. A heavy pit of dread formed in Shrubley’s middle as he ran.

Cal didn’t have the natural resistance both Shrubley and Smudge had. Smudge had protected Shrubley as well in his gelatinous form.

[Gelatinous]: Reduced physical damage due to your squishy shape.

For a moment, Shrubley could see the ability that had done it. He didn’t have any time at all to wonder how he saw Smudge’s Shardscript.

Cal crossed his arms in displeasure as he dropped, watching the ground coming up to crush him into a fine powder. He knew he wouldn’t die, but it didn’t mean that he had to like it.

There were no spells that would keep him from shattering on impact, so there was no reason to cry or scream about it. All he had to do was wait and it would all be over.

It wasn’t cool or glorious, but it was all he had.

Just as the whole world seemed to be taken up by a handful of hard cruel cobblestones, Cal wished he could tell Shrubley–

–Shrubley and Slyrox tried to make it to the falling skeleton in time, but they were too slow. Shrubley felt dew prickle at the edges of his glowing yellow eyes as he watched his very first friend shatter like a porcelain dish hitting the floor.

White fragments spread out everywhere. They pinged off buildings, rolled across the cobbles like badly weighted dice, and plinked into the murky waters of the fountain.

Just as Shrubley was about to mourn Cal, his friend’s voice spoke to him. “Would you be so kind as to pick up my femur from the fountain, Shrubley? There’s something nibbling on it, and it tickles.”

Shrubley stared down at the grinning white skull. He gently picked it up. “Cal?!”

“Hi,” Cal said, who was now nothing more than a talking skull. “I feel a bit light.”

“You’re just a head.”

“Ah, so I’m getting ahead in the world?”

Shrubley stared.

Cal stared.

Slyrox giggled behind her mitts.

“Pyuu?” Smudge asked.

Cal cleared his nonexistent throat. “My femur? The fountain, remember?”

He would have shaken his head if he could have. Did Shrubley really think he was dead? The poor little thing must have had a… well, not a heart attack, because he was a shrub, but certainly something.

It was perhaps one of an undead skeleton’s most iconic racial abilities, something that was the butt of every joke in any necromantic crypt across the world.

I really thought he’d know about it, Cal thought as Shrubley fished out his femur and used his sword to bop a strange octopus-like creature that was trying to bite ineffectively through Cal’s bone.

[Go To Pieces]: When you take critical damage, the magical essence holding your bones together dissolves and you fall into a pile of bones rather than take unlife-ending damage.

Not the most glamorous ability, but it worked when it needed to work, and it was far better than dying. Again.

It didn’t take them very long to find the rest of Cal’s bones. He knew where they were, and by the end, he was able to put himself together.

“This place looks familiar,” he said, twisting on his tibia. It made a faint squeaking sound. He looked up at the same thing Shrubley was looking at it.

It was the largest building in the town and it dominated the western rise.

“Isn’t that–?”

“The Adventurers Guild,” Shrubley said with disbelief.

Only it didn’t look anything like the guildhall. It was overgrown with more of those strange vines and roots that somehow felt sickly to Shrubley, though he couldn’t say why.

In fact, he also felt a little faint, though he attributed this largely to the ordeal he’d just been through.

Slyrox eyed the building curiously. Neither the koblin nor Smudge had ever been to the place in Taamra village.

“Yeah,” Cal said. “That’s it all right. Why does it look like it’s been destroyed?”

Shrubley shook himself mutely. There was no way this was possible. The Snake Count couldn’t have enacted his plan that fast!

“The Imposter tongue-flapped muchly about Mirror essence?” Slyrox asked in her customary way of speaking.

Most of them could glean her meaning, though not Smudge. On the account of a lack of brain and all. Tongue-flap roughly equated to talking or speaking in this particular context. Muchly essentially meant very much or a lot.

“Mirror essence,” Cal said slowly, staring at the building and then the surrounding buildings. “Yes… I don’t think we’re in Taamra anymore. At least, not the one we’re familiar with, Shrubley. This is like a reflection of the world in a dirty puddle. It’s mostly right, but not quite.”

Shrubley wasn’t sure how he should feel, and yet his first thought was that of curiosity. “Do you suppose we could go to the first floor now?”

Cal chuckled. “Why not? Maybe we’ll find some adventurers there. They seem to enjoy poking their noses into places they aren’t wanted, and that is about the most foreboding place around.”

Slyrox punched one mitt into the other. “When I eye-peek them slither-scales again, it’s game over for them!”

“Game over?” Shrubley asked. He had never heard that before.

“Yes. Is tongue-flap memory from Havior!”

“Is that a place?” Cal asked.

“No, is most special person in all of Aldim, my home!” Slyrox corrected. “Havior is greatest person, honorary koblin, is very rare, very difficult title! Only one!” She fiddled with her mitts. “Only… Slyrox not sure what ‘game over’ means either.”

Shrubley motioned forward with his small wooden sword. “Let’s go check out the guildhall. We need to get our bearings.”

New Quest: The Lightless

You have found yourself in another realm, much alike yet different from your home. You must find your way back to Almora before the portal connecting the two realms is closed for good and you are trapped here forever.

Objectives:

Find a way back to Almora 0/1

Rewards:

Class Experience (Epic)

Party Experience (Epic)

[Essence Gem Box]

“A new quest?” Cal asked curiously. “So soon after we failed the last one?”

“Pssh-koh! The Shard takes pity on us.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Shrubley said, carefully watching the ominous-looking alleys and side streets.

Taamra never looked so uninviting and scary before. And there was something else that was bothering him. His leaves felt cold and brittle despite the strangely cloying heat of this place.

And that was when Shrubley realized what this place reminded him of.

It reminded him of a compost pile. Hot and uncomfortable, rotting and dark. Shrubley shivered again despite the warmth.

The sooner we’re out of here, the better, he thought as they climbed the sloping street and found themselves face-to-face with the overgrown entrance to the Adventurers Guild.