89 – Into the Deep End

How curious. She couldn’t wait to see what it would do if she poured it down the barrel before firing at a locust. Around her thigh it went.

She took the rest of their brief break to fully and properly go through the Tablet, having forgotten to even check her Attributes last time.

NAME - ZELSYS

SEX - FEMALE

SPECIES - UNRECOGNIZED

FORCE - B+

PRECISION - B-

HARDNESS - C+

AETHER - C+

TRAITS>

<STORAGE

Zelsys didn’t remember what her own ratings were the last time she checked, but she knew that they had grown substantially - especially her Hardness. No wonder, with how much punishment she’d taken and recovered from in the last few days. Traits came next, but these were not different save for the new addition.

TRAITS

Survivor’s Instinct

Fog-breathing

Great-cleaver Expertise

Lesser Gunmanship (Arm-cannon Spec.)

Osmotic Essentia Absorption

Metabolic Alkahest

Beast Butchering Arts (Unique)

Stormsurge

No… Upon second look, there was another change - her Great-cleaver Expertise had improved. Mulling it over, she thought it only made sense. When the trait first showed up, she had only gotten the most basic feel for using her weapon. Zel found it a little amusing that, according to the Tablet, her gunmanship hadn’t at all improved since it last scanned her. Before putting it away, she took two of the slug-loaded shells out of her ammo belt and replaced them with the stick grenades, whose thick handles fit surprisingly snugly. The two shells went into Fog Storage, alongside the extra supply bag and Vitamax bottle.

Before she could put the Tablet away, Zef prodded her side, “Mind getting my war-knife out of there? Oh, and a bayonet sheath.”

“Sure,” Zel smiled, scrolling through the list. It just now dawned on her that she still owed the three the return of their property, with much of what had been stored at their old camp still in Fog Storage. That being said, the list didn’t have a label of which war-knife belonged to who, only their condition.

There were three in storage, despite the fact their squad had only four people, and Makhus had his weapon on him. A backup for the Captain, maybe? Out of the three, Zelsys defaulted to the one in best condition.

x1 Ikesian War-knife (Tarnished)

The sheaths for both the war-knife and the bayonet were further up under the overarching category of Ikesian military equipment, and once both finally emerged from the vortex Zefaris took to strapping them both to her left hip. There were even two bayonets, but both were tagged as (Dulled). That explained why none of the three soldiers carried a bayonet.

Rest and preparations finished, they returned to the march.

Between the intentionally dehumanizing outfit and outwardly hostile demeanor, she was more than happy to just stick with Zef and make no attempt to interact with the Inquisitor, who quickly took over leading the march, only for Strolvath to catch up with her much to her obvious annoyance. Had she known Crovacus would assign someone this unpleasant, she’d have suggested someone - anyone - else. Even Sigmund, had he been able to move at all.

Alas, she wagered the Inquisitor must at the very least be a competent combatant. Strolvath looked like he was just itching to tell her about the Grekurian Inquisitors, but being that there was one present right there, he couldn’t. Instead, he strummed out an ominous, creeping instrumental on his citar and began to sing.

“Lead them in chains, purify them with flames...None will dare speak their names, only dust will remain…” he sang with the most irreverently mischievous tone she’d ever heard.

“Inquisitor, how many have you saved? Inquisitor, inquisitor, in the blood of the damned you bathe! Inquisitor, is it sin that you pray for fame?”

The Inquisitor finally whipped around, standing in the middle of the path as she furiously signed at Strolvath. Zel couldn’t quite discern what she was signing, but she couldn’t have missed Strol’s response even if she tried. “A’ight, a’ight, I’ll stop! I’m just makin’ fun, by the dead gods! It’s not like anyone’d actually believe you lot are even remotely religious.”

An audible sigh wheezed out of the Inquisitor’s mask just before she turned and continued walking, her footfalls barely registering despite the fact she wore sabatons. The four produced some small noise as they walked through the last stretch of uninfested land, these being mostly brief exchanges of words and careless heavy steps, but even they quieted when they heard the ambient sounds of forest critters fade away and saw the greenery visibly becoming sparser.

There was no creeping sickness, no seeping miasma like in the Exclusion Zone. No, the forest was perfectly healthy, but every couple dozen meters they saw signs of the locusts. The first was a patch of bare dirt, stripped free of plants. Then, they saw entire trees stripped of all bark and leaves, standing on bare muddy ground. Skeletons, still steaming and glistening wet, yet picked clean with their largest bones shattered and sucked clean of marrow.

Zelsys knew better than to let her attention slip at this point - the silence was tense and heavy with the possibility of an impending ambush, the sour stink of locust-man excretions subtly lingered in the air.

Hours drew on, and they each imbibed their preferred form of stamina restoration elixir. Strol downed an entire bottle of the vile swill that was Vitamax, whereas Zef only drank a third of hers and Zel finished off her bottle of Liquid Vigor. Even the Inquisitor drank half a bottle of Vitamax, occasionally pulling her gas mask just far enough to drink.

Zel caught one, maybe two glimpses of the woman’s jaw - visibly covered in scars, even at a glimpse. Well before they would reach the next stopping-point, their charted path took a sharp turn off the established footpath. Once more into the depths of the forest, through what was functionally a barely-visible tunnel carved into the densest section of the forest that could be found.

At points, there was no path, no tunnel, it felt unnaturally dense and lively, like the living portion of the Exclusion Zone.