B3 Chapter 305: Further Reaches, Finale.

*Ding! Moderate Feat of Strength performed under Observation. You have been awarded a Minor Honour: Persistent Survivor IV*

Kaius slammed his heel into the cave floor, stopping himself fast.

“Huh.”

Kenva, frozen equally as solid, slowly turned to face him with her brows furrowed and her eyes unfocused in the distinctive way of someone reading a notification.

“Did you
?”

He nodded, rereading the notification again.

“Yeah.”

“Wanna share what just happened? The bond’s a mess.” Porkchop huffed, his shoulders tensing.

Kaius turned back to Ianmus and his brother, taking a step to the side to open up space. “Just, uh, walk over here. You’ll see.”

Porkchop rolled his eyes, while Ianmus gave him a suspicious look. They listened all the same, stepping over the biome boundary before they too stopped suddenly to focus on their notifications.

“Huh, didn’t expect that.”

“Right? Should we check it together?” he replied.

“Sounds good to me,” Ianmus agreed with unfocused eyes.

Not needing any more encouragement, Kaius ripped open the description for the Honour.

Persistent Survivor IV:

Minor Honour

Whether through wit and cunning, or strength and domination, even the most deadly environments can be thrived within.

Awarded to those who successfully traverse a Great Depths’ biome with a layer level average 100+ higher than their level upon entry. Get notified if you come within 100 longstrides of a Zone of Respite . +3 all stats, +1% all stats.

Bonus: For achieving this honour in the first tier, the notification radius increases to 200 longstrides, and the stat bonus is increased to +5 all stats, +2% all stats.

Kaius stared at the minor Honour in confusion. It was a reasonable reward, and an understandable challenge — but Persistent Survivor IV? How in all of the forsaken hells and celestial heavens had they managed to miss two of them? And why was it so utterly different from the first?

There were other oddities too. No level limitations for when they could obtain the honour, a bonus for achieving it in the first tier, and no bonus for being first? It broke the mold of what he had come to expect from Honours’ challenges.

Obviously he knew just how little he had scratched the surface of the System’s rewards for overachievers, but this one had caught him by surprise. 

How the hells had they missed two? He could only hope that they were similar, and they hadn’t grown too much to earn them.

The passive reward, sensing Zones of Respite — which he could only assume were safe rooms — would be a grand boon indeed. The bastions of safety would only get rarer with every layer they descended, and even with its small radius it would greatly aid their ability in finding the blasted things. If the other minor Honours in the chain came with similar rewards to that and his and Porkchop’s Champion sense, they would be invaluable.

As his shock subsided, a buoyant energy filled him — made his feet feel light and his body feel swift. This proved they were on the right path, what better omen could he ask for?

He shot Kenva a grin, “Still think running in here was a stupid idea?

Roused from her stupor, Kenva blinked as her eyes refocused on him. She rolled them a second later.

“Fine. You were right.” her voice was deadpan, but she didn’t manage to suppress the happy grin on her face, “Now let's get going, there will be time for us to theorise about the missing Honours later.”


.

Crouching at the mouth of the cave, Kaius stared at the Godmaw Jungle with silent intensity.

A cavern that dwarfed even the immensity of the dwarven citadel of his first delve, it spread out before him like a sphere that had been squashed halfway flat. They’d entered right where the floor and ceiling diverged — stone curving ever upwards to eventually end in a yawning opening that revealed a clear blue sky. 

It made him feel small. Like he was an ant, being scrutinised by the eye of a creature he could not comprehend. Or, he supposed, like he was trapped in the mouth of a god.

The simple size of it was almost difficult to comprehend — the opening in the centre of the roof had to be a half a league above its lowest point, and as wide to boot! Yet it still managed to be diminutive compared to the cavern as a whole — it would take them a week’s journey to reach the far side, easily. Probably more, considering the difficulty of judging such distances, and the tough terrain.

The biome only got more imposing from there. Dozens of smaller openings littered the ceiling, lances of sunlight punching through to drench the cavern floor below. Inconsistent in their coverage, they created a mottled spread of dusk and dawn.

Just like the central maw, these too dripped with water, creating an ever present mist that mixed with a tropical heat to cling itself to every hair's breadth of his body.

That was just the roof! The jungle itself was
something else. 

From their point mid-way up the cavern wall, the ground sloped gently inwards to form a wide bowl — creating a vantage point that gave them a clear view of an endless stretch of tightly packed green, split into segments by six rivers that howled towards the basin’s centre.

It was utterly alien compared to the large temperate and alpine forests he was used to in the Sea and the wider frontier. Ferns the size of oaks grew tall under the watchful eye of unfamiliar trees bigger than any he had seen before, leaves the size of wagons bobbing under the weight of bucketfuls of dew. Vines grew like a wizard’s beard from every available surface, creating an almost impenetrable curtain.

And the undergrowth! It looked almost solid — an unending stream of tangled shrubs and creepers. A verdant snare, woven denser than a duke’s carpet. 

Coursing out of the immense caves that were level with their own, the rivers sliced through it all, defying their nature to spiral around the covered basin in a gentle curve. They met in the middle and became roaring falls that spilled endlessly into a hole that mirrored the opening in the ceiling. A blackness where the jungle simply
stopped — impenetrable, despite the ample light that flooded it from its twin above. Not even his Truesight could pierce the black. At least, not at its current level, and not from this far.

It chilled his very soul looking at it — a sensation he had no explanation for.

Kenva swallowed beside him. 

“Ten platinum the Guardian’s in the doom-hole.” 

The fact that she couldn’t stop staring at the blackness that lay at the centre of the biome made Kenva’s joke fall flat.

“Your skill is about stopping things from hiding from your sight, right? Can you see into it?”

“No.” he replied grimly, “And I'm not taking that bet — I know it’s in the doom-hole, I can feel it tugging me.”

Kenva grinned, “And the nearest Champion?”

“Somewhere over there.” Kaius pointed a third of the way into the jungle segment one river-crossing over from them. “It’s roaming, but it shouldn’t be too hard for us to avoid.”

He heard a soft gasp from behind him. Ianmus and Porkchop had finally caught up.

“By the headmaster’s beard
”

“It’s like home, but wet.” 

Kaius cracked a smile at his brother’s bland curiosity. He shouldn’t have been too shocked — Porkchop had shared more than a few stories of the Deep Sea, and trees that scraped the sky like natural recreations of Mystral’s mage-spires.

“The real question is how we’re going to reach the other side to keep pushing towards Deadacre, I don’t think we’ll be able to ford the rivers — they’re deep, and look far too fast anyway.”

She was right. Kaius frowned, honing in on the spiraling waterways that segmented the biome. Even though the base of the cavern was a depression, he by no means had an uninterrupted view of the rivers. The jungle trees, with their canopies that could shade a dozen or more lesser trees, obscured the water regularly as they reached out over the open space to soak up as much light as possible. 

At points, mostly where the rippling banks of the waterways constricted to occasional narrow points, the canopies merged completely and utterly hid the rivers from view.

Kaius started, eyes whipping back to the last such point he had seen. Could that be the answer? Across all the varied varieties of jungle tree, he’d noticed that they were all study and thick limbed — magically enhanced or no, they simply had to be to support their weight. 

They were touching.

He flicked his eyes back to the closest examples of the green titans, focusing on their furthest branches.

Each was as thick as the trunk of a lesser tree. 

He narrowed his eyes. It was a natural highway, but it would be risky. The air was by no means motionless, and the jungle swayed in the breeze. They would have to cross hundreds of strides worth of perilous footing — and a single misstep would send them plunging a bone-breaking height into the rapids below. 

Plus, he wasn’t exactly sure how on earth they would get Porkchop up there.

He nudged Kenva, drawing her out of her own search. 

“It’s not exactly my preferred choice, but what about those?” Kaius pointed to the nearest point where the canopy stretched over a river.

The ranger pursed her lips. “I thought of that, but how would we get Porkchop up there? Even if we have enough rope, he’s definitely too heavy for us to haul.”

Ianmus chimed in, squinting as he tried to make out what they were looking at. “It looks like there’s still taller branches — it would be relatively easy for us to create a rudimentary pulley if we had to.”

“Excuse me,” Porkchop let out a huff, cutting through their conversation. They paused, looking back to find him tilting his head in annoyed confusion.

“Do you think these claws are for show?” he drummed the dagger-length scythes of jade on the cave floor, each one clacking loudly on impact. “I’ve been climbing trees of that size since I was a yearling — or did you somehow forget I grew up in the Deep Sea in the five minutes since I mentioned it?”

“Wait, you can climb? I thought they were for digging? And fighting, of course,” he added quickly when Porkchop gave him a few teeth.

“And I thought that opposable thumbs were for throwing rocks, not making them into square blocks so you build houses. Of course I can climb! Even lesser meles can climb!”

Kaius simply stared, trying to wrap his head around Porkchop  — who weighed as much as several oxen — clambering his way up a trunk. He couldn’t do it, it was too ridiculous.

A deep laugh rose from his belly. “Why haven’t I seen you do it then?!”

“By the matriarchs, have you seen the size of me?! The saplings you apes call trees would snap like twigs. Besides, when was the last time you randomly decided to climb a tree — and don’t include all the times you did it for scouting, I mean for fun.”

Kaius scratched his head. When had he last gone tree climbing for the hell of it? 

“When I was a boy?” he hesitated.

“Exactly, ape. I can climb trees — proper sized ones, at least — just fine.”

Kenva groaned, though she didn’t stop sweeping her eyes over the jungle.

“If you two idiots would stop bickering for three minutes, I was about to say that it might not matter.”

He turned towards her sharply. “Oh?”

The ranger’s hand snapped out, “There, there, and there.”

Focusing his vision, Kaius saw what she was referring to — although only just. Natural bridges, barely visible through narrow gaps in some of the denser parts of the canopy. One looked like one of the grand jungle trees had died and collapsed, laying length wise over the river. The other two looked like naturally formed stone arches — though suspiciously convenient.

They were perfect! Although, it would be by no means easy to reach them. They would have to push straight through the depths of the Godmaw Jungle if they wanted to make it across the biome in any sort of reasonable time. Thankfully, he’d been able to stay the course of their heading — they wouldn’t need to cross to the exact opposite edge, just find a way out near the northeast-east, if the opposite side was north.

A dangerous prospect, considering it was undoubtedly teaming with beasts — he could hear the baying cries and sharp shrieks of dozens of different creatures from here. 

They would have to move cautiously — as a group. He wasn’t quite confident it would be safe for Kenva to operate in her full capacity as a scout just yet — not with the level difference so extreme. That would change in the second tier and as her stealth skill grew, but for now, they would have to rely on her sensory capabilities alone. And his, of course. 

The more he looked, the more he spotted more land bridges. Kaius committed each one to memory, leaning on Explorer’s Toolkit to help him plot a course through the jungle.

Rising to his feet, he felt a flush of anticipation. A jungle, eh? Should be a fun little challenge.

“Shall we?”