Vivid Stars Online

While I'd been staring at the entrance in horror, Linnea had been examining it in more detail. Thankfully, this gave me time to gather myself before she returned, otherwise I was sure I’d have made a fool of myself.

“I don't think we have the gear to explore this right now, boss,“ Linnea said as she returned. “It looks dark inside, and I only have a small flashlight. Might be better to leave it for another day. “

An out, I thought, relieved beyond belief to have a reason not to go into that dark, confined space. Running away might not be the most heroic action, however, in this case, I’d take it any day of the week.

“That sounds sensible,“ I responded, trying to stop my voice from shaking. “We can continue to the lake for now, and I'll mark it on my map for later.”

While she said nothing, I had a feeling she’d noticed something was off. There wasn’t anything I could do about that, however, so I simply ignored the situation and moved on.

I slowly calmed down over the afternoon spent out in the bright and open sunshine. By the time we’d made camp, I felt brave enough to have a look at the new quest the System had issued me.

Quest: Cave Diving (Path of the Psion)

You have located a cave radiating Psi energy, explore its depths to discover the next stage of your path.

Objective:

Explore the mysterious cave

Rewards

40 XP

Path Continuation

Fuck, I sighed, glad I was checking in my tent and not out in the open. I’d been holding out at least a little hope that it was a generic quest I could complete elsewhere. Instead, it was extremely specific, requiring me to venture somewhere I could barely even think about.

Maybe it will be ok? I got used to the pod, after all, I might be able to work through it in time. I wasn’t sure I actually believed myself, however, it was better than acknowledging that my dream was over right here and now.

Eventually, I decided to just focus on the Explorers Guild quest right now and figure out my Psionic path later. It was the pragmatic way to go about it, or at least that was what I told myself.

Feeling a little better, I moved out to eat dinner with Linnea. For the nighttime, we’d built up a large fire as I usually did. While Linnea might be in full-time immersion, she still needed to sleep. She just did so without waking back up in the real world.

That meant we would both be sleeping the night, making the fire imperative to keep Beasts away. Luckily we were still in the forest so firewood was easy to come by.

We made a little small talk over dinner, however, neither of us really knew each other well enough to discuss anything deep. That was fine by me since I was still reeling from earlier events.

After dinner, we split up into our tents, her to sleep the entire night and me to wake up in the real world and sleep there.

The next morning, we set out bright and early. While we had walked about twenty miles yesterday, given my detour, we only got fifteen miles closer to our objective. That left us with thirty-six miles to go, doable in two days if we didn’t get delayed.

We had six fights that day, all still fairly easy with the two of us. I was becoming cautiously optimistic that the mission wouldn’t be that hard after all.

The third day was pretty much the same, though we had eight fights. We stopped early that afternoon, making camp on the edge of the tree line a few miles from our destination. Neither of us was keen on getting there at night.

After making camp, I stood around awkwardly for a few minutes. I wanted to use the spare time to log out and have a bit of a break in the real world, however, that wasn’t something Linnea could do.

Eventually, I realized I was being silly and just asked. “So I’ll probably use the afternoon to log out and take care of a few things in the real world. Will you be OK here in the camp? I don’t want to leave you alone if you’re going to be bored out of your mind or anything like that.”

“Don’t worry about it,“ she laughed in response. “I wanted to call my sister and spend a bit of time chatting, anyway. It's been days since I’ve talked to her after all.”

I nodded in response, glad I wasn’t abandoning her before slipping into my tent and logging off. I’d have most of the afternoon and evening off, just needing to log back in to feed my character.

The next morning, we had a strategy session before leaving the forest.

Linnea started us off. “While it’s been pretty easy so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if the plains between us and the lake are a step up in difficulty. Particularly when we get close to the lake, animals always congregate around water and predators follow them.”

I nodded in response,“ That makes sense. Even If the difficulty stays the same, staying on guard won’t hurt us. There's the quest to think about as well, I wouldn’t put it past the game to make whichever area I find particularly dangerous somehow.”

I hadn’t really considered before that the System might increase the difficulty because I was going after such a large food source. However, the extremely custom nature of my new Cave Diving quest made me think it might be more dynamic than I had first thought.

It wasn’t enough of a worry that I was going to abandon our mission at this point, however, it was certainly something to think about.

While we spent a little more time discussing potential dangers and coming up with battle plans, there wasn’t much we could do without more data. So we packed up our camp and moved out.

We left the treeline in our usual formation, me in front with my pistol drawn and Linnea a few feet behind me with her long rifle. The terrain changed quickly over only a few hundred meters, transitioning from trees and undergrowth to four-foot high grass as far as the eye could see.

It immediately started making me nervous, anything could hide out there in the grass. Worse, the sheer density of it was reducing the effective range of my scanner down to half a mile. We would get far less warning if anything was approaching.

While I could use the booster mode on the scanner, which was supposed to drain the battery like crazy, it was something I would do for short periods or in an emergency; it wasn’t something that was suitable to run full-time.

All we could do was push forward the best we could. The grass also slowed our travel, reducing us to roughly a mile an hour. Thirty minutes after we’d left the forest, I picked up the first contacts.

“Three Beasts approaching from the front,“ I whispered back to Linnea. “No information on what they are, either.”

“Understood,“ she whispered back. “I’m not going to get much range in this grass, so I'll stick to rifle mode. Let’s try to flatten it out at least a little to give us some room.”

I nodded in response, we had little time before they’d arrive but it might be enough to give us at least a few feet of space. We quickly flattened out a small area before stopping as we heard the grass rustling up ahead.

I stepped forward a little, preparing for my role as the group's tank. While it felt a little silly to do that as a Psionic Ascendant, my Toughness stat was a little over twice that of Linnea’s. That was hopefully enough to give me an edge if they got close.

Three canine shapes burst from the grass in front of us, one coming straight on with the other two flanking. These were actual wolves, big ones, too. Each of them stood taller than my hip and was as wide as I was.

The middle one died to three bolts of plasma from Linnea’s rifle in quick succession. She certainly hadn’t been kidding about having a higher rate of fire in rifle mode.

Having trusted that she would take care of the most obvious one, I trained my pistol on the one flanking the left. I got two shots off, one hitting each shoulder before it charged. I hoped Linnea could take the other one, as I was in no position to help.

It barreled into my legs, biting down hard on my right calf as it came. It was the same maneuver the first Dire Ferret I’d fought had used. This time, I was ready for it. While I couldn’t stop the actual bite, I was able to keep my balance and shoot straight down into its head.

While I wanted to believe that I’d become a better fighter, I had to admit that my Toughness stat probably had more to do with it. The wolf’s bite hadn’t hurt nearly as much as the ferret's had and I’d held my ground much better as well.

Having fried my wolf's brain, I turned to see Linnea on the ground with the other wolf on top of her. She was holding it off with the barrel of her rifle in its mouth. “A little help here,“ she shouted, her voice shaking with effort.

I wasn’t particularly confident about not hitting her at this range, so I jogged up to point blank and shot that wolf in the head, too. Bradford hadn’t been kidding when he’d said a pistol could be used in close combat.

“Thanks,“ she gasped as I held out a hand and pulled her up. “I’m not the best at close combat, I’m afraid,“ she laughed while poking at her injured leg. Just like me, she’d been bitten on the calf, though hers looked rather more serious.

We took a break to each seal up our wounds, then I gave Linnea a little longer to rest as I worked on removing the wolves’ cores. The combat report had identified them as Dire Wolves, something my scanner could also pick up on now they were close.

It seemed the grass was affecting it even more than I’d thought. We would have to be careful in case it missed something.

The journey was slow going after that with Linnea’s injury, though I felt surprisingly fine. I had a theory that Toughness was reducing the damage I took and Will was increasing my pain resistance. Possibly Mind was doing something as well. Keeping me clear-headed, perhaps?

Whether I was right on the specifics, it was clear they were doing something as I’d come out of the encounter far better than Linnea had.

After several hours and another fight against two wolves, we came out of the grass to a rocky shoreline. It was several hundred feet from where we were to the massive lake shining in the midday sun.

It was a beautiful sight, the final destination of the expedition. I couldn’t wait to finally get a good scan of it. We were careful on approach, however, nothing attacked us in the short distance to the shore.

For the first time, I activated the booster mode on my scanner and waited for it to gather as much information on the lake as it could. A couple of minutes later, I had my answer.

The lake was absolutely teaming with life, filled to the brim with schools of fish. Tortoises of varying sizes lay about on rocks jutting out of the water, some even larger than I was.

And deep in the depths, right at the edge of my scanner range, larger things moved. I wasn’t sure what they were, and I didn’t particularly want to find out. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be an issue for the fishing operations.

As I finished looking over the scanner information, I got a System pop-up asking me if I wanted to confirm this as my selection for the First Mission quest. I only thought about it for a moment before accepting. This was just too perfect a location to ignore.

A moment later, my quest updated.

Objective Update for Quest First Mission (Path of the Explorer)

Objectives:

Locate an area where the city can immediately begin gathering food (Complete)

Survey the location for two days

Secure the location for future use

I turned to Linnea, grinning my head off. “This is it, I’ve got the quest update to confirm it. Apparently, we need to secure it, however, so I expect we have more combat coming up.”

She nodded tiredly in response. It had already been a long day, however, she still seemed to be up for it. Now we just had to find out exactly what the game was going to throw at us.