Lee hated swamps. He hated marshes, wetlands and any body of water that wasn’t a crystal-clear lake or a river.
And it wasn’t only because of the dirty water. The atmosphere here alone was enough to kill the most joyous mood, to not speak of the stinking gasses and the beasts lurking below the water surface.
The carapace covered creatures that resembled a mutation between a tortoise and a crocodile kept ambushing him every couple hundred yards, but fortunately they weren’t as large as the first one he t upon arrival.
Even if they were, they wouldn’t be the worse thing about this place. The true horror were the mosquitoes.
They were about the size of half a sparrow, and their sting had a strange anesthetic effect. If one fell asleep without anyone guarding them, their blood would be sucked dry long before the sunrise. That explained why the beasts had the thick carapaces, but since Lee didn’t have one, after he killed the first insect, he rushed toward the three mountain peaks, towering through the clouds sowhere in the distance.
At first, he killed the mosquitoes as soon as he spotted them. But after walking three or four miles, he noticed his left side getting numb. A walnut-sized insect was latched to it, bloated from feeding. When Lee smacked it dead, blood splattered everywhere, soaking his side, and he imdiately wore one of the artifacts from the Celestial Abyss’s collection to protect his upper body.
His skin was mostly covered, but there were few bare spots, and since he couldn’t feel whether he was bitten by mosquito or not, he began to periodically use a weak version of Fla Armor. It did consu a bit of fire elental energy and hurt every ti he used the skill.
Nevertheless, several insects died each ti and he was happy to pay the price.
What Lee didn’t realize was that the flashes of fire were attracting even more mosquitoes. He blad the setting sun for the phenonon and increased the pace, finally reaching the edge of the swamp by nightfall.
He was next to a forest, but the darkness had already covered it and he didn’t see any other way but to climb one of the threes and spend the night wrapped up in four different robes – each one a precious artifact.
Surprisingly he did fall asleep.
He didn’t know whether it was because of the peculiar air, or the mosquito that bit him last night, but when he woke up in the morning, he found it impossible to get out of the robes no matter how hard he struggled.
In the end, already getting desperate from claustrophobia, he summoned Soulcleaver and cut the artifacts with a bleeding heart, only to realize he was stuck between the treetops in the middle of a thick spider net.
Him waking up attracted attention of a dozen pumpkin-sized spiders. They rushed towards him, but Lee in panic began to swing Soulcleaver left and right. He did kill a couple, but the spiders turned out to be surprisingly nimble.
Fortunately, the main damage went into the web and few monts later Lee fell, on the way down crushing into branches. When he heavily landed on the ground, he knew he had fractured several ribs. His legs were fine, though, and he rushed into the forest, trying to get further away from the spider nest.
’Welco to Droskar Dominion!’ Lee said to himself, slowing down after a couple of miles, ’I really hope there are no dragons or ...’
He didn’t manage to finish his thought when a pack of calf-sized gray wolves ambushed him. None of the five beasts had ignited a spark, and Lee’s only loss were few scratches on his cheeks – besides his wounded pride, of course.
’What the hell is this place?!’ Lee was shocked.
No matter where he went, sothing attacked him. The previous world, the one he just ca from, wasn’t as dangerous. In fact, probably only few of the lesser words he had visited before had places like this, but also only because Lunax dropped his devotees right in the middle of a spot swarming with beasts.
Before noon Lee fought off the fifteenth wolf pack and decided to bla everything on Elder Ardent. Clearly all spatial elental lords were sadists and took pleasure in the suffering of regular people like him.
It was hard to imagine how it was possible for so many predators to coexist so close to each other, although there was a plethora of smaller animals that looked like rabbits and squirrels. The resemblance was only visual, though, and it was their size was what shocked Lee.
None of the animals he encountered were smaller than a dog, not even critters. And the deer, seemingly ordinary from the distance, were actually larger than moose.
That, of course, explained the size of the wolves, but it didn’t make Lee feel much better. He had the humorous thought that sohow he had beco smaller instead, but forgot about it after going through several more bloody fights with wolves. The only good thing about this place was that he hadn’t stumbled across a bear yet.
***
Lee struggled through the thick forest for eight long days, mostly praying he wasn’t going in the circles. The only way to tell the cardinal directions was by the sun, barely visible through the thick foliage.
He was in constant pain from the side effect of using the elental energies during encounters with ferocious beasts, but there was no way around it – otherwise they would straight up eat him. The artifacts he wore, the trousers and the chest armor, protected him from most injuries and he noted that the next thing he needed to acquire were artifact-level boots.
When Lee realized he was going up a mountain slope, although still in the thick forest, he finally could heave a sigh of relief. The idea was that by climbing one of the three mountains he would have the highest chances of finding a human settlent, preferably a city. And if he didn’t see anything on the one side, he would travel around, not across the mountains, until he figured out the best route to leave the damned place.
There was a problem. He t the first beast with an ignited spark. It was a fierce, flaming mountain lion, but fortunately it was alone and Lee managed to deal with it. The spark it had was of relatively bad quality, and kept Lee’s hope alive that this was a populated world.
Unfortunately, during the upcoming days these encounters beca more and more frequent. The only good thing was that the mountain lions who had ignited a spark didn’t co in packs.
Lee tried to climb a tree to find out whether he had gone high enough up the mountain, but not only he couldn’t get to the very top of the tree because branches were too thin, on the way down he was t by a surprise.
A bear in the size of a small house patiently waited for him, lying on the ground while longingly looking up the tree. The mont Lee noticed the beast, his hair stood on end from terror. The thing was so big, it seed it didn’t matter where or how he would stab it – the beast wouldn’t care.
Lee’s first reaction was to get back up the three again, but the bear charged at it, a split mont before the crash lighting up in a yellow light, and directly broke it apart under his massive weight as if it were a thin branch.
From the impact Lee hurled towards another tree, barely managing to grab a branch to not fall down. But seeing the bear continuing its charge, he waited a mont and let go the mont the beast was about to be below him.
Lee lost count how many tis he stabbed the poor beast before the latter realized that running around or getting up on hind legs wasn’t going to throw off the hateful human. It was unbelievable how tenacious it was, but when it finally thought to roll on the ground, Lee jumped off and delivered a well-tid slash at its front paw. It was as thick as a log, but Soulcleaver cut off the front part as if it was cutting butter.
The bear roared in pain, but Lee didn’t wait for it to go truly berserk and dashed away. It was impossible for the beast to catch him on thee legs and the ruckus they made highly likely attracted other predators who would take care of it. After all – the bear was bleeding and not him.
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