Ewww
You return to the tent and grab the bag of valuables that Lucius so gracefully left for you. You remove most of the stuff, and leave only two gems and a handful of gold. No need to spend everything on corpse disposal, after all. You notice that his body is already starting to look a bit
off. It has turned kind of blue and you notice a few flies are already preparing themselves for a feast. You need to get this corpse removed as soon as you can, or else everybody with a functioning nose will figure out you''re keeping a guy with a nasty case of death in your tent. When you return to the breakfast club you created, you see most people have finished their meals by now and are now simply socializing. Howard and Thorgal, world's blandest swordsman, seem to be getting along famously, while Midas continues his songs. He has switched to a more subdued song, which is surprising, considering his repertoire of enthusiasm. You skitter over to Laiko, who is having a small talk to the heavily armored woman, Yunikki. It appears to be a rather one-sided conversation, with Yunikki listening intently. For the first time, you can see her not trying to act tough. As it turns out, she looks sort of pretty whenever she isn't scowling.
Laiko seems to be talking about what dreams could mean in relation to the real world. While it is certainly interesting, you interrupt him by tapping him on the shoulder with one of your legs. He stops talking, and turn to you. You toss the bag of money and gems in his lap and tell him that he needs to find a couple of morons to clear out the body in about an hour. He takes the bag and looks inside. He looks more than satisfied at this reward, and excuses himself to Yunikki. However, Yunikki offers to join him, clearly interested to hear more about whatever they were talking about. You don't really care, as you've got a nasty job ahead of you.
Body mutilation.
You leave, letting the squad socialize on their own. When you arrive back at the tent, you crack your knuckles, loosen your shoulders, and grab the decaying corpse. First things first, you need to see how removable that paint is. It's pretty thick, so it should come off by pulling. You pick at it with your nails for a while, and eventually manage to find a bit of a foothold. You can't quite get your finger under there, but it does seem like it would come off in one go. After some fiddling, you eventually just resort to wedging your blade in there. You slice up a bit of the meat, but that's hardly an issue at this point. Your victim is in no position to complain. After you managed to get your hands under there, it comes off easily. It's a bit of pull-work, and you're grateful that you can put multiple feet on the guy for leverage, but eventually, all of the paint comes off in one go in under a minute. It'd be satisfying if it weren't so morbid. There is a pale discoloration where the marks used to be, from the lack of tanning if you'd have to guess. Now that the paint is gone, he looks rather normal, apart from the gaping hole in his chest. His face has gone slack, leaving him with a dumb expression on his face. It'd be funny if it weren't so disturbing.
Of course, speaking of faces...
You take a deep breath, ready your sword, hold that breath you took, and begin cutting his cheek. No blood comes out, as you feared it might, but god is it still filthy! You saw upwards, so you have a big cut up to his forehead. Then, you change direction, moving across his forehead. That DOES lead to some blood leaking out, and it's dribbling on his legs. The smell is unbearable. You make the mistake of breathing in and get a noseful of the sweet, thick stench of decay. You cough for a bit, and go outside for a fresh breath of air. You take another couple of deep breaths, and go back inside. You make a cut to the other side of his face, and then you should have decent... flap. You pry your blade between the meat and skull, starting from the forehead and slip it downwards. It gives way with ease, until you hit the nose. You put some strength to it, and the cartilage gives way after a good stab. Of course, you end up with the blade sticking out of the face. You pull it out so you can slice properly, bit that just causes the whole face to flop forward. The meat, barely attached to the skull with some muscle and gore, slowly falls forward as the more stubborn pieces snap, one by one. At the sight of this grisly event, you begin to dry-heave. You swallow, and look back to your handiwork. The bloody skull seems to gaze upon you as the eyes remain in sockets. You decide to get that over with right now, and scoop them out with the tip of your sword. It was a very fast, very easy motion, but the feeling of the flesh giving way under your blade...
You go outside again, partially to get a breath of fresh air, partially to prevent your breakfast from having a grand comeback. You succeed, barely swallowing the grains as they come up and go back inside. You've done your fair share of battles, but having to perform this brutality is quite a bit different. You're down to the last stretch, however, and it is by far the worst. You
grab the flap of meat and muscle and quickly cut it off with your sword. You drop it and jump back, shaking your hand as you try not to scream. You take a deep breath and go outside to find something to wrap up the gore in. Eventually, you manage to find an abandoned, empty money pouch. It's made out of some simple fur, so it should be fine. When you re-enter the tent, the stench floods back to you. Evidently, the flies have found this fresh morsel, and are coming in to feast. You find the face-flap two meters away from the corpse, and you scoop it up in the bag. Then, you find the eyes lying between the legs. In one of them, you can already see a small family of maggots. Your skin crawls, and you just push it into the open bag with your sword. Now you've got a satchel of face and a decaying corpse. What an inventory.
The schmucks you ordered Laiko to get arrive nicely on schedule. One of them has a black eye, giving you an idea of how they convinced them. They look rather scared when you come closer, and their expression hardly changes when you show them the grisly result of your corpse alteration. Fortunately for them, they brought a small cart, usually used for transporting food around the camp. They load it on, and leave. Nobody but these schmucks saw the "transaction", so it should be smooth sailing from here.
You wipe your hands on the sand, and then take a deep breath.
That's over.
You already had the plan to train for the better part of the day, and cook in-between. You figure that if those are your only plans, this day should just fly by.
Level: 3
HP: 20/20
Mana: 10/10
Equipment:
Sharp studded leather armor
Leather harness
Steel sword
Wooden shield(Well-made)
Items:
Poison-box (in your tent)
Around 100 coins and five rubies.
Skills:
Poison Stinger (Potentially lethal)
Major experience in blocking and swords.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: excellent
Corpse Cutting: Awful.
Author
Topic: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure (Ended) (Read 189733 times)