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Tutorial Rewrite 104
🕑 Added 2023-02-02 10:04:35 +0000 UTC—Ah! Wh—where am I?
I’m lying on something hard and rocky. Hm… Oh, I know! It’s rocks, isn’t it? I try to get up, but then I remember that all the ladies borrowed my limbs. Bummer. I wonder what they need them for? Anyway, by turning my neck, I’m able to tell that I am, indeed, lying on top of a rocky alcove. I knew it! Sadly, this means that I’m all the way back at the start of the floor. Damn it.
But my limbs have started to slowly heal, so within time, I should be able to get them back. I hope…
…Hm? Oh, hello there, weird seagull. You look kind of, uh, REDish? What’s that all about?
Flap flap flap flap. Oh, another one! Is this your friend? Flap flap flap flap flap flap. Boy, uh, there, um… Sure are a lot of you, huh? You look just about ready to have a feast! But, erm, how come you’re looking at me like that? N—now, wait just a moment, I’d actually rather you didn’t come any closer. You see, I’m kind of in the middle of meditating here. It’s very important to me, and it takes the utmost concentration. I’m talking nobody-within-one-metre sort of concentration. And even though I do think your plumage is wonderful, I’d rather be able to keep…
See, this is what I mean! Standing two inches away from my face makes me feel very uncomfortable, and it isn’t respectful in the least. I would like for you to—
H—hey! Stop pecking my eye! That just isn’t—oh, and now you just took the whole thing. Very unprofessional. And the missus, too? Oh, come on, keep your kids away from my bowels, that’s just—I barely had any intestines left, and now your whole family is eating it. That’s just rude! Isn’t it common courtesy not to take the last of something until you’re sure nobody else wants it? Or am I not a part of this group?
Hey, don’t turn away from me! You—damn—bird!
Craning my neck, I bite a hold of the bird’s supple throat, biting through the feathers, ignoring the way it’s started squawking and flapping its wings like crazy, and with just one strong bite, I completely behead it.
<Breezebird (Lv.27) Defeated.>
I toss the corpse at the rest of its family, who flap their wings and take a few steps back. But it wasn’t enough, because now they’re just approaching again, not caring that the head of the house is now both headless and houseless.
I may have neither limb nor organs, but that doesn’t make me helpless, damn it!
Another bird approaches to peck at my face and I snap my teeth at it. It takes a step back, recalibrates, and then approaches from the top of my head rather than the side. It pecks at my eyes and I can’t really stop it. But I know how these birdbrains think. I open my mouth slightly and begin to wiggle my tongue like it’s a worm. I don’t have eyes to see it anymore, but I can smell and hear it. I take slow, calibrating breaths through my nose. And once it foolishly pecks at my open mouth…
—I bite!
My teeth clamp down on top of its head and I clench my jaw with all my strength, crushing the skull and making its soft brains splatter the inside of my mouth.
<Breezebird (Lv.25) Defeated.>
Another one down. A dozen or so left. That’s doable, I think.
A lot of them are still pecking at my bowels and stumps, but some are approaching my head and face. The worm in my mouth is just too tempting to ignore, I guess. Slowly, one by one, I whittle down their numbers, until the final one perishes from my mouth.
<Breezebird (Lv.29) Defeated.>
<Breezebird (Lv.26) Defeated.>
<Breezebird (Lv.27) Defeated.>
<[Level Up]>
<You have reached Level 46.>
<Agility has increased by 2.
Strength has increased by 3.
Stamina has increased by 3.
Magic Power has increased by 1.
Dagger Tooth has increased by 1.
Swim has increased by 1.
Crush has increased by 1.
Blindness Resistance has increased by 1.
Evisceration Resistance has increased by 1.>
Alright. I’m lying pretty exposed here, so I should probably…
A beautiful song reaches me, even through my burst eardrums.
Yeah, I need to heal up so I can return to the party. Leaving the ladies all on their own is very unbecoming.
Using my head and my jaw, I drag myself towards a small hole in the rocks. There, I’m able to take some sort of shelter. There are a lot of crabs taking tiny crab nibbles off me, but since I can just crush them by bashing my skull onto the rocks, it’s fine.
<You have learned:
Concussion Tolerance Lv.10>
<You have learned:
Concussion Resistance Lv.1>
Yup, totally fine.
I close my eyes and meditate.
<A Canto appears to you.>
<[Along the upper rim of a high bank
formed by a ring of massive broken boulders,
we came above a crowd more cruelly pent.]>
Alright. Sure.
Once my arms recover, I use them to eat the crabs. I don’t get any messages for doing so, which means I don’t need to eat all of them, but I still do. Yummy! Very crunchy, and with a soft, surprisingly sweet inside. After some time, I recover enough to emerge and return to the party.
Staggering across the rocks, I try to regain my groove, but for some reason, the groove just isn’t there. Weird. When I look down into the depths, I find that all the ladies have food in their mouths, so they can’t sing. Not talking with their mouths full is far from disrespectful, but the fact that they’re eating the limbs and organs they borrowed from me is very uncouth. I was expecting those to be returned, thank you very much.
One of the ladies notices me and quickly swallows down a few of my fingers. She sticks her arms out of the sea, inviting me for a dance, but I’ve got a better idea. I’m kind of tired of always coming to visit you, so how about we take this dance—I take her hand—at my place?
Pulling her out of the water, I expose her for what she truly is. A bulbous, bony creature, with four maidenly arms emerging from the top of it, its thick, scabby tail beating furiously in the air. And now, out of the water, her singing sounds less like something a pretty lady could create, and more so a hoarse blubbering from a beastly throat. Ew, gross. As she flails through the air, briefly, I simply stick out my arm at her, straight, stabbing her through the chest. But as it slides in, her beastly, sharp-toothed lower mouth also bites into my shoulder, which is very unseemly for someone unwed. However, as close to her as I am now, I can finally see what she is.
<Lady Lure (Lv.43)>
Uhuh. Lady? You sure about that?
Well, alright. For her crimes of being unladylike, I sentence her to death. Are all in favour? Great!
Pushing my clawed hand into the side of her head, I make a drilling motion until I get far inside to grab its neck. Fish or not, a broken neck is a broken neck. I clutch my hand hard enough to feel the bone break.
<Lady Lure (Lv.43) Defeated.>
The second she goes limp, the song sung by the other ladies turns chastising. Hey, why are you taking her side?! She wasn’t being respectful in the least! All I wanted to do was to invite her over to my place. Is that really so bad? Oh, damn it, these songs are just…!
Biting off the fingertips of both of my index fingers, I stuff them into my ears, effectively sealing out their annoying song.
Hm. That’s weird. Where did the ladies go?
<You have learned:
Delusion Resistance Lv.5>
Hmm. Something weird is going on.
I look down into the watery depths. A lure looks up at me.
<Lady Lure (Lv.40)>
Ah. So that’s how it is.
I let my eyes go up the path of stones. Yup, still can’t see where I’m supposed to be headed.
That means I’ve got plenty of time to do away with these lures.
Comments
Diez de Groot
Dog skills are usefull
