Chapter 87: A Giant Fucking Hole
I was still feeling a bit out of it after shaking back and forth like that. To be honest, I was a tad bit worried I scrambled up my insides, but everything seemed fine enough.
Bryson was occasionally muttering words, but I wasn't able to piece together any full sentences. Still, I was able to gather the fact that he was stunned. Though you could probably imagine, he was yelling at me about how stupid I was pretty much the entire time while fighting.
However, I was already a grandmaster at tuning people out, so I hardly even noticed it.
Though I still felt a bit tired, I got up and rushed over to the bear. After all, after killing a mob, naturally, there was going to be loot!
Nathan also made his way to the bear.
"Looks like the corpse doesn't just poof into a bunch of useful materials."
I got my grappling hook and sword back before laughing.
"Well, if it's this big then there should be quite a bit of good stuff! It won't just end up being a couple of crystals."
Nathan rubbed his chin before trying to use his spear to pry out the rougher patches of skin that it had. A bit of blood spilled, but it wasn't that exaggerated. What looked like a large dark brown rock had come out from the bear's body. After thinking for a while, Nathan slammed his spear against that large dark brown rock, cracking it.
A tiny iridescent crystal shined from within.
"Huh. Maybe we will only end up getting a few crystals after all."
My eyelid twitched.
"...So it's still a damn scam even when everything becomes realistic. I guess I shouldn't have expected much from this damn game."
Nathan let out a small sigh while holding up the iridescent crystal, holding it up to the sunlight.
"Since it wasn't too big, it was definitely a magical beast that had only recently formed, so that's reasonable enough. Besides, we wouldn't be able to carry it all even if it did have all that much. It's not like we have a cart of anything."
I clicked my tongue.
"Why can't this game have anything convenient like a spatial ring?"
Nathan shrugged his shoulders and continued to pry out the hardened patches.
"I guess it's consistent considering the general intelligence of people here isn't very high, so making things like that is asking too much from them."
I rolled my eyes while prying away other pieces of the dark brown stone before shattering it to get the iridescent crystal inside.
"It's not like the general intelligence of people is particularly high in the first place."
Nathan laughed as he pierced through the flesh of the bear with his spear, trying to feel it out. After doing it several times, he let out a sigh.
"Looks like there aren't any more further inside. It looks like we really will only be getting a few crystals... and they are damn small too."
I felt a lot more discouraged after realizing that the profits of defeating this magical beast weren't exactly the highest. We were able to harvest five really small crystals, and two medium-sized ones. The smaller ones realistically didn't have that much value other than for decoration or making jewelry. Thankfully, the two medium ones should fetch a decent price.
Nathan took a deep breath as he picked up.
"When we get back, I'll leave it to you to sell or use them. If I keep them, then someone's just gonna steal it."
I gave a curt nod after pocketing the ones he didn't take.
"I don't plan on selling them just yet, I want to do an experiment with them, but since I feel like it's going to take a while I'll hold off for now."
Nathan let out a hum indicating that he heard before extracting a rather large chunk of flesh from the bear.
"It looks like this stuff isn't too muscle heavy, so it shouldn't be that tough to chew."
I blinked a few times.
"I already feel like I know the answer, but I'm going to ask anyway. Are we eating that stuff raw?"
Nathan nodded his head.
"There are going to be other animals that will be attracted by the bloody smell. Now that the thing is dead, the deterrence force isn't going to be great. If we cook, then we'll probably need to fight something. If we bring the raw stuff with us to cook later, the heavy bloody smell will also attract things."
A frown formed on my face.
"But it's going to taste nasty."
Nathan's eyelid twitched.
"You're the last person I want to hear that from."
'What? You couldn't possibly be thinking of actually-'
Bryson seemed rather startled at the proposition to eat raw meat. But we didn't really bring that much in the first place, so it wasn't like I was just going to give up on it. Although I wasn't sure if Nathan was right in his judgment, I just decided to trust him anyway.
Nathan split it in two and tossed me one half before biting down on the flesh. I similarly did it as well, despite Bryson's many protests. At first, I only took a small bite, but I took a slightly bigger one after. And then a bigger one after that.
Until I ended up eating the whole thing by the time Nathan had only finished half of it. He raised an eyebrow and gave me a look with the same energy as I told you so.
'This taste... I can understand the commoner food, but how could you even eat this?'
It seemed Bryson could also taste the same thing I was, being in the same body and all that. He kept trying to vomit, but I obviously wasn't going to let him do that, so he was just in this constant state of sickness.
Soon enough Nathan finished eating as well, so we decided to head out deeper into the forest. In the end, other than a few bugs here and there, things were relatively peaceful. There were hardly any animals that we had to be worried about running around.
The taste of blood was still quite strong in my mouth even after all this time, which was what Bryson was complaining about, but this wasn't the time.
After running for what felt like a few hours, we ended up making our way out of the forest, and out to a large grassy plain. Upon seeing that, I got on my knees and let out a few rough breaths.
"We finally made it."
Nathan looked at me strangely, but I just ignored it. More importantly, my eyes were fixated on what was just a couple meters ahead of us.
Or more accurately, what wasn't there.
In the middle of the plains was, to put it plainly, a giant fucking hole. The canyon was about two kilometers wide, and the drop off looked like what you would expect from a sinkhole.
While there was completely normal greenery all around, it suddenly transitioned to a dark gray rock. The walls of the canyon were also made of the same rock too, and the light of evening shone within, but it wasn't enough to see the bottom, as it disappeared to just become black all of a sudden.
The reason why Nathan got us the grappling hooks wasn't actually for climbing up the city walls, it was just something that happened to be there along the way. In reality, the purpose was to scale down this thing with relative safety.
I still remembered the words of the book and how he mentioned that there was supposed to be some sort of master at divine arts waiting somewhere around here, but there wasn't a single sign of that, and it would be rather strange for a master to be around here anyway.
In the first place, I didn't put too much hope into his words considering that something like that never happened in the game. As such, I wasn't that disappointed.
From there, we began preparing. Nathan made us buy some extra rope so that in addition to the grappling hook digging into the ground, we would also tie it to a nearby tree for extra insurance. To be honest, I would've just thought the grappling hook was enough, but considering I wouldn't be able to get out if it failed, that was probably a good call.
The original setting in the game was that if you jumped in, then you would die. However, if you had learned how to fly using wind magic, then you would be able to explore the depths below and even acquire a new skill. It wasn't all that strong considering how hidden away it was, but it was still something that we were able to find after many playthroughs in the game.
Naturally, we hadn't learned that kind of magic yet, so we were finding another way around it. To be frank, most of our equipment was actually just rope. If it turned out that the rope we had individually wasn't enough, then the plan was to use the rope and bind it together to make a super long rope.
Nathan took a deep breath.
"I'll go down first. You stay up here just in case something goes wrong. If the rope isn't long enough, then you're going down instead."
"Yeah, I know you told me already."
With a nod, he then began scaling down the side of the canyon. As he slowly made his way down, his figure gradually began to disappear, until it was covered in the darkness entirely. It almost seemed like he was being swallowed by a giant beast, making for a rather ominous appearance.
Down further was supposed to be a miniature labyrinth with some basic puzzles that would eventually reveal a book that explained how to use the Blackout spell. The reason why we had come out here in the first place.
After roughly twenty or so minutes, I saw that Nathan was climbing back out. He called out to me while climbing up.
"Looks like the rope isn't enough. We're going to have to tie them together. You're up next."
I let out a sigh before nodding.
"Alright, fine."
Bryson thought I was crazy for doing this, but after gathering up all the rope and tying them together, I started making my way down, all the while Bryson called me crazy the entire time.
Oh yeah, Nathan has a fear of heights. I know it might not look like that considering the fact he just went down without batting an eye, but he still did. I personally didn't, but as I continued climbing down into the darkness...
I thought maybe I should've had that fear.
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