EmEs_etherious
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Chapter 105- Bambam's Girlfriend
🕑 Added 2023-10-19 22:59:01 +0000 UTC“If I were alone, I never would have considered it,” Alyssia said quietly. “This locus seems difficult enough without the extra difficulty. With you, however, I think it might be possible. Heck, it’s probably the only way we’ll actually receive a proper challenge from this place.”
Alyssia didn’t say anything else, giving him the time to consider their options properly. Her words, however, had made it clear what she thought about the matter. Arthur didn’t let her opinions influence him and instead tried to think about the situation from a logical perspective.
Whilst the locus of power had been a little annoying to deal with so far, it had yet to pose any more danger to them than a large pile of horse faeces. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest decision to base the rest of it only on their experience of the first layer, but Arthur was confident enough in his own abilities to think that they’d be able to deal with it easily enough if it continued down the same strain.
And better rewards. If Alyssia wasn’t just trying to sell it to me, the stuff this place produces will already be absurd. And we can enhance them. In the end, Arthur’s decision was mainly influenced by greed. An opportunity like this was simply too great to pass up.
“Break it.”
Alyssia complied and the small blue orb instantly shattered, Arthur’s perception was barely able to keep up with the tiny stone she’d launched from her hand to achieve the result.
“There's no going back now," Alyssia warned, “Even if we skip the challenge stone on the next layer, our final trial will be significantly stronger than it’s supposed to be.”
Arthur just nodded his head. He’d made his decision already, and he wouldn’t regret it. With the blue crystal now broken, Arthur noticed that many of the plants surrounding it had lost their former lustre. Not all of it, but enough that he could notice it easily enough.
Alyssia suddenly turned sharply to the left, the direction in which the stable was located. She raised her hand to her ear as if communicating with some piece of headgear before speaking.
“It looks like our little mares lost her patience. She’s currently walking around the stable but it looks like she’s too nervous to enter.”
“So, do we wait and see what happens,” Arthur asked hopefully.
Alyssia looked at him with an incredulous expression on her face, as if he was a fool to even suggest such a thing.
“What! And waste all the treats we came here for. I’m not sure if you’ve realised Arthur, a horse does not have hands. Pray to tell, how in the seven heavens will our little Mrs Bambam get in the stable? She can't open a door.”
“Or do you expect our magic horse girl to actually shapeshift into a human,” Alyssia mocked.
Arthur ignored her rude tone and scratched his head awkwardly, unsure as to how he should reply. Alyssia had a habit of shutting people down with cold hard logic, the sort of stuff everyone thought of but refused to say out of polite etiquette. Alyssia’s forthrightness was a welcome change, if an annoying one and the only person he could really blame was himself for suggesting stupid things. It kind of reminded him of the person he'd once been.
Still, after spending so much time in Bambam's company, Arthur had grown a little attached to the horse. Enough that it felt wrong to harm his mate in such a cruel and callous manner. Yes, Arthur knew he was being a hypocrite. He’d killed his fair share of innocent animals in the wake of the system's arrival and this was a minor crime in comparison. That didn’t mean he had to like it though. Diarrhoea aint that bad though, is it?Diorrhoea
“Hurry up, we’ve not got all day,” Alyssia called back at him. She was already making her way through the tunnel that had led them to this small cave and her voice echoed strangely throughout the place. Arthur sighed wearily and reluctantly followed after her.
Their journey out of the cave was far quicker than their entry into the narrow crevice, mainly because Alyssia was setting a far faster pace but also because she no longer had to stop so often to double-check if Arthur was following her. Why she had done so the first time was anyone's guess but Arthur suspected she was a little afraid of small and dark places.
They made their way outside in under thirty seconds and Arthur squinted at the sudden change in light, his eyes adjusting far quicker than they usually would have in the pre-system era.
“I’m going to go ahead, okay,” Alyssia said before darting off in the direction of the stables.
She was gone from his sight in three seconds, leaving only a trail of upturned earth in her wake. With a top speed at thrice the speed of sound, even if she could only maintain it for a short while, Alyssia was far, far faster than Arthur. It made sense that she go ahead but he couldn’t help but worry that the Alverin woman would do something stupid if she confronted the Stormwalker alone. After all, she’d taken enough mushrooms with her to harm even him, and so Arthur, for the first time in a while, tested his body to its limits.
He ran. As fast as he could. Within a few seconds, he was cruising along the grasslands at the same speed as a car on the highway, petering out at a top speed of eighty miles per hour. Whilst it wasn’t anywhere near Alyssia’s current march-2 speeds, it was so far beyond the realms of pre-system humanity that Arthur couldn’t help but laugh at the novelty of it all.
The fake sunlight shone down on him. The beautiful landscape all around, even the wind resistance on his face all combined to create a true sound experience. It was indescribable, nothing at all between him and the ground beside a thin layer of synthetic fibres that remained of his footwear and everything whizzing past so fast it felt like the world's rotation had been dialled up to eleven. And Arthur's perception meant that he could capture the beauty of it all in the fall.
Not for the first time, he wondered how creatures without the stat functioned when they began to move at absurd speeds. Perhaps like Alyssia, they used some sort of ether-based skill to do so, or maybe they had a different stat altogether. One thing Arthur had learned in the past few weeks, was that a specialist build was nigh impossible to achieve. Not unless you had hundreds of years of research and development throughout the generations into it.
Someone like Alyssia, who based everything around her insane speed was exceptionally rare and no one on Earth would be able to replicate that feat. At least not without joining an alien faction of some sort to access their knowledge. In fact, with how many unique skills boosting agility that Alyssia possessed, Arthur estimated that he’d need well over a thousand stats in the attribute to even come close to rivalling her speed.
All these thoughts raced through Arthur's mind as he ran towards the stable, praying he wasn’t too late. Even if Alyssia was significantly faster than him, her stamina was dog-shit terrible, meaning he didn’t think he’d be too far behind her. Disasters happened in seconds, however, and Arthur hoped he wasn’t about to arrive at the scene of a horse homicide.
A few minutes later, the stable came into view and Arthur was a little surprised to see that he wasn’t even short of breath. Sure his endurance was almost four times as high as his agility but he’d just run an all-out sprint for five minutes straight, an accomplishment that by all rights have been impossible.
But impossible had been turned on its head for the past month now and it didn’t look like it’d be getting back on its feet anytime soon. Arthur slowed down to a jog and approached the large wooden stable cautiously. It was designed with some traditional Greek architecture and was far larger and grander than any horse stable had a right to be. It was more a wooden palace than anything else.
When he neared fifty feet of the building, he heard Alyssia's voice mumbling something, the sound distorted a little by the wind that carried it to his ears. But it sounded suspiciously like laughter. For fucks sake. Did she really go and kill the dumb horse? Arthur once again increased his pace, but this time he made sure not to make too loud a noise.
Arthur knew that if he scared the doubly-evolved Stormwalker now, it would be a long time until they saw it again, if ever. Even with 92 perception, the beast only appeared as a blur in his vision. Arthur carefully walked around the stable towards its entrance. Yep, Alyssia was laughing and very, very loudly too. He turned the corner.
The sight that greeted him was not one he would forget easily, if ever. Alyssia was standing there, doubled over in laughter, her hand repeatedly smacking the side of the building. She was positively hysterical.
“Oh shit, oh shit! Look at its ass.” She cried out.
The words weren’t directed at him but Arthur complied anyway. He immediately regretted it. Even if he one day lost his vision, the sight he saw would be burned into his memory forever. A horse was standing there, smaller than the other Stormwalkers he had seen and a darker shade of green too. Arthur didn't doubt that it was Bambam's girlfriend, the source of all their current troubles.
That was completely fine with Arthur. It was what the horse had done, was doing, that frightened him so much. Her backside was painted blue, and so was the floor beneath her. It took him a moment to realise what the luminescent stuff was, he couldn’t really deny it when it came spraying out of her ass like a fountain.
Judging by the amount of shit around her, the mare had been at it for a while. Arthur didn’t really find it funny at first, even a little sad, but he couldn’t help but laugh out loud when the beast was actually PROPELLED forward by the force of her excrement. It was only her forelegs digging into the ground that prevented her from crashing face-first into the stable wall. Alyssia couldn't stop laughing.
"Haha. I didn't even have to make a meal for it. The dumb bitch just straight up stole the mushrooms out of my hand. Faster than I could react. I couldn't have stopped her even if I tried."
She’s got diarrhoea. She’s actually got magic diarrhoea!
Arthur would no longer have to wonder what someone at level 300 would look like whilst taking an explosive shit. He highly doubted the results would be any more spectacular than the spectacle before him. He’d only just managed to bring his laughter under control when an especially powerful blast caused the poor mare to execute a perfect front flip in complete defiance of the laws of physics.
That set him off again and Alyssia’s constant stream of loud jokes really didn’t help matters. The strange exhibition continued for a short while and Arthur would have felt sorry for the mare's rectum if she didn’t look as high as a kite. The horse was on cloud nine and he doubted she’d remember the last ten minutes when she regained her mental faculties.
Finally, after an incredibly acrobatic double front flip, Bambam's girlfriend mercifully passed out. Arthur quickly used a quick blast of purify to clean the area and was a little surprised when the blue shit didn’t immediately disappear. On a whim, he identified the stuff. The result he received was… interesting.
Shroomite shit (Rare)-This strange substance is as uncommon as it is strange. Produced with questionable methods, it has extremely potent narcotic effects and so is well sought after in the upper echelons of society. Possesses little other use.
Arthur didn’t even hesitate. He dialled up purify to consume as much ether as it could take and the shroomite shit dissolved into nothingness at a speed visible to the naked eye. He’d had enough to do with drugs to last a lifetime and even if it could fetch a pretty sum outside in the real world, he didn’t have any need for financial gain currently, nor did he have the required license to sell the stuff or a method to transport it. He highly doubted Alyssia would be kind enough to use her storage bag to transport shit.
Alyssia wiped a tear from her eye and looked at the unconscious horse. “I never would have expected we’d finish the layer like this but I’m not complaining.” She chuckled again.
“C’mon, let's get her reunited with Bambam before she wakes up. Getting her into the stable should complete the requirements for this trial and let us advance onto the next.”
She walked over to the sleeping beast and crawled underneath it. Standing up, Alyssia immediately toppled over without even managing to take a step forward, the weight of the horse far too unevenly placed on her shoulders. Arthur laughed at the sight. Alyssia had completely disappeared under the mare’s baulk, only a single green hand visible. She crawled out from underneath it, her face flushed with embarrassment.
“Stop laughing and come help me,” she huffed loudly.
Arthur shook his head in amusement at Alyssia’s antics and walked forward.
122 effective strength. That should be enough to lift a horse.
