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Chapter 158: Village Ring
🕑 Added 2023-04-06 17:36:01 +0000 UTCJack emerged from the tunnel with a full breath of fresh air.
“Ahh,” he said in mock relief. “Nothing beats a good old desert.”
The Village Ring, unlike what its name indicated, was not a village. It was a scorching desert striped with red and brown sand, complete with a large amount of sun mushrooms a hundred miles overhead, an arid climate, and a whole menagerie of fearsome monsters.
The ring’s name came from the nine villages spread around its surface, each in its own oasis. These nine were, in fact, the only oases of the entire ring, and they were the main meeting points of cultivator teams throughout Trial Planet. People entered by themselves, crossed the second and third ring, and reconvened here, where they could interact with other cultivators or recruit them to fill in their missing team spots—in case someone died on the way.
This practice was so fundamental to Trial Planet that, even though the Hand of God spread the members of teams across multiple entrances to the second ring, they didn’t separate them by too much, allowing them to reach the same village in the Village Ring. Hence why Gan Salin had been so confident they would reassemble here.
Of course, Jack and Brock didn’t know all that. Nauja had informed them as they crossed the long tunnel.
“I always dreamt of the day I left my ring,” she said, stepping out of the tunnel entrance behind Jack. “This is…almost dreamy.”
“Wait till you see the good parts,” Jack replied, laughing. “This desert is a poor introduction. Don’t you think so, Brock?”
The brorilla carried his Staff of Stone in one hand and wiped his forehead with the other. Though his short fur was well-suited for a desert climate, he was simply too low-level. The temperature here was far higher than in any desert of Earth. The sand burned like coal, and the air shimmered from the heat. Moreover, the sun mushrooms glared from above, a large crowd of little suns, and there wasn’t even a hint of a cloud to protect the poor cultivators below.
“From what I’ve heard,” Nauja said, stepping to the front, “this ring isn’t too dangerous. We should be fine as long as we’re careful.”
Jack nodded. “Fine by me. Any idea where that village is? The sooner we reach it, the better.”
“Simple. See the columns?”
“Yeah.” He looked up. As in every other ring, the entrance tunnels were large stone columns that extended from the floor to the ceiling a hundred miles overhead. Obviously, they were visible from a large distance away. Jack could see them towering in all directions, sparse but clearly present. The closest one—besides theirs—must have been a day’s walk away.
Since this was the fourth ring already, its surface area was much smaller than the entire planet’s. As a result, not only were nine villages enough to cover the entire desert without anyone needing to walk too long, but the ring’s curvature was easily visible. Jack caught the ceiling arcing in the horizon, the stone columns rising diagonally through the air.
“There is no entrance near the villages,” Nauja explained. “If we find the place where the columns are sparser, that’s where the village will be. Can’t miss it.”
“Hmm.” There were stone columns as far as the eye could see, stretching intermittently like middle fingers to the heavens. Looking more carefully, Jack did spot a suspicious absence of them around a spot to their front and left. “On the bright side, I think I got it,” he said. “But it’s far away.”
“Yeah,” Nauja confirmed, shielding her eyes. “Must be a week’s worth? Maybe closer. I can’t calculate distance well here.”
“Neither can I. Don’t worry about it.”
“Shall we?”
“We shall.”
And so, without any sort of ceremony, they left their stone column behind and marched on.
“You know,” Jack said as an afterthought, “isn’t the column we came from suspicious? If anybody maps these entrances to the exits above, they will notice that our column doesn’t lead to any known exit. With a bit more research, they’ll trace it to the Forbidden Cave.”
“I guess.” Nauja shrugged. “But it’s not that easy. Mapping entrances to exits requires precise coordination between two teams, one in each ring, and nobody has the time for that. Besides, it’s not like they’d earn anything.”
“What if anyone tries to climb up from here?”
“Not all entrances are accessible from below. If I had to guess, this one isn’t, and nobody wants to climb up for a day only to reach a locked door and have to go all the way back.”
That’s how long it took them. The tunnel from the surface to the second ring was hollow, allowing Jack to cross it quickly with leaps. The rest of them were not, forcing them to walk a hundred miles down—much more, if one calculated the slope. Even at a brisk jog—the equivalent of a pre-System human’s run—it had taken them a day to reach this ring from the Ancient ruins.
As a bonus side effect, not only were they in a desert, they were also winded.
“Very well. Let’s hope nobody takes a closer look,” Jack said, throwing the column a final glance.
“Yeah…” Nauja agreed. “Let’s hope so.”
“Yes,” Brock added his two cents.
And so, they cast into the desert. It was…dull. There was no terrain besides the endless sand dunes. Moreover, the sand itself was annoying, as it had the bad habit of sometimes caving under their feet and forcing them to exert more effort than seemed necessary. Other times, it was hard as a rock, throwing off their rhythm.
It was easy for one’s attention to drift in the desert. To doze off. Thankfully, Jack had indomitable will, letting him remain razor-sharp even in this dull terrain—at the expanse of boredom.
He also took the time to go through the screens he’d received upon entering the desert.
Congratulations! Title “Second Ring Conqueror” upgraded to “Third Ring Conqueror!”
Efficacy of all stats: +10% → +15%
Village Ring Quest:
- Make your way to the Space Ring in a team of at least three and at most five individuals.
The 5% increase was a welcome bonus. Jack’s strength was already pretty high, what with all the level-ups from the Enas trial and the extra, fused Dao Root—or what the System assumed was a Dao Root—with its sixty stat points. Add to that the now-fused Indomitable Will, which also gave sixty stat points, the Immortal Serum he’d consumed on Earth, which gave another fifty, and his perfect Dao Seed, which was a qualitative advantage, and his strength was beginning to snowball well outside the reach of a normal level 80 cultivator. Or, at least, so he hoped.
With any luck, he could now fight late E-Grade monsters equally, perhaps even peak ones.
Amusingly, that also made him stronger than Nauja. Probably.
She caught his weighing glance. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. Just admiring the only thing that moves in this damn desert.”
“How can you be bored already? We’ve been here for, like, twenty minutes.”
“That’s nineteen minutes too much, if you ask me.”
She laughed, more out of good mood than amusement. “Whatever, desert hater. This place may seem uninteresting to you, but it’s the first time I see anything other than my jungle. Aren’t you simply overwhelmed by all this?” She gestured wildly.
“All this what?”
“All this empty space!” She spun in a circle. “Look! There are no trees, no bushes, no dinosaurs. My eyes can see far away without climbing on the canopy! I have perfect awareness of my surroundings! It is so empty! So…different!”
Her voice almost culminated in an excited squeal before she pushed it back down, but Jack could sense her enthusiasm bubbling over. She was like a kid in an amusement park. It could have been adorable if not for her ripped body and big-ass longbow hanging on her back.
Still, he cracked a smile. This could have been me when the System came, Jack thought. If everything wasn’t trying to kill me. Must be nice.
Then again, hadn’t he felt this way when watching the stars from the bridge of the Trampling Ram? When he woke up in Pearl Bay, was teleported to the Belarian Outpost, or crossed half a galaxy to reach Trial Planet, with its ruined surface and multi-layered innards? When he met the giant forest and its insects, when he hunted dinosaurs and drank alcohol with barbarians in a picturesque valley in the middle of a lush jungle? When he stood in front of a God?
What a big world…
He drew in a deep breath, uncaring of the burning wind, letting it fill his lungs and expel the sadness. He was free, unfettered, adventurous. He was an explorer, a pioneer. Even the constant danger was more of a pleasant inconvenience than a terrible fate. His path was one of violence, now. In conflict, he felt alive.
And what a great feeling that was.
“You know, Nauja,” he said, sliding up besides her, “the world is such a vast, wonderful place. There are oceans, mountains, deserts, jungles, forests, plains, cities. There are stars—giant balls of fire that can easily fit a thousand Trial Planets inside them—planets of all kinds, people of a million different species, all distinctly different, and yet equally mesmerizing. Have you heard of kovans? They’re shaped like spinning tops, with four arms and one leg they hop on. Their planet’s atmosphere is so dense that they can fly, and they feed on gas.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“For sure!”
“I’ve seen kovans before, but I never knew…” Her gaze darkened a bit. “Those are all cultivators though, aren’t they? Delvers. Greedy, disrespectful, unethical bastards.”
“I’m a cultivator too, aren’t I?” Jack shot back, his smile gentle. “The world is full of assholes, but there are nice people, too. On the way here, I met a captain and a crew who toured the stars with only camaraderie in their hearts. They accepted me as one of their own even though I lied to them—even though I had to.” His gaze grew distant for a moment. He still didn’t know what happened to the Trampling Ram. “I hope they’re okay.”
“And how do you find people like that?” she asked, letting her curiosity take the better of her. “All the delvers I’ve seen are…” She didn’t finish her words, but her grimace was crystal clear.
“I don’t know about delvers,” Jack admitted. “They come from B-Grade factions, so they’re a different breed… But there are all sorts of people out there. You just have to sift through the bad apples and keep looking until you find a good one. Bond with them, then keep going until you are surrounded by trustworthy, loyal, wonderful people.”
She shrunk back. “That doesn’t sound easy.”
“It is not. But with a little bit of courage, a little bit of practice, and a little bit of patience, you can make your world a beautiful place.”
“I… I don’t think I can.”
“Everyone can.”
“No, you don’t understand, I—” She cut off, biting her lip and shaking her head. “Nevermind.”
She then stormed on ahead. Jack followed her with his gaze, surprised at her sudden change of mood, but didn’t press the issue.
Brock, sensing Nauja’s suddenly foul mood, walked up to her and grabbed her hand. She froze for a moment, staring at him, but then resumed walking, one barbarian and one brorilla, each drinking in the company of the other. Nauja’s steps regained her spring shortly afterward, though a hint of bitterness remained deep in her eyes.
Minutes turned into hours. The terrain flowed on, one sand dune giving way to another. Everything looked the same. There were no landmarks besides the stone columns, but they were so big and so far away that they seemed unchanging, as if they were walking but staying in the same spot.
It could be disheartening. The harsh environment also didn’t help. Thankfully, Jack had been through worse, Nauja was busy being excited, and Brock didn’t care too much, though he did occasionally ask to ride on Jack’s shoulders. His bare feet didn’t handle the hot sand too well.
Unfortunately, they had neither an umbrella nor the spare fabric to make one, so they were forced to endure the scorching sun mushrooms.
Occasionally, they did spot monsters. They were rare but strong. Jack was the one to spot an oddly shivering sand dune, which they made a wide circle around. Once, they were attacked by a level 80 giant scorpion which simply burst out of the sand. Due to its ambush, the threat was far larger than its level would indicate, but Nauja saw it coming just in time and jumped away. After that, the battle was swift, bloodless—for them—and, unfortunately, level-less.
There were horse-sized scaled lizards hiding just under the sand, snakes slithering between the dunes, as well as round, brown ticks that camouflaged seamlessly into the desert. The weakest monster around was level 80, with the strongest—the snakes—ranging up to 124.
However, by far the biggest threat they saw was a colossal sand worm.
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Author's note:
When the deck is stacked against you, the only way to win is to break the game.
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