Chapter 32
Back at the library; Jaune, Ren, Nebula, and Octavia are down mining a tunnel with their new augers and illuminating it with the mining helmets on their heads. They dug through the area that connects the library with the museum in order to get to some of the other places for anything worth taking. The augers are noisy as hell as they continue to burrow through.
"CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN WHY WE'RE DOING THIS?!" Octavia does her best to raise her voice among all the noise.
"BECAUSE WE DREW THE SHORTEST STRAWS!" Jaune says while keep drilling.
"JUST OUR LUCK!" Nebula complained. "AND I WAS HOPING TO GET SOME DECENT SLEEP TONIGHT!"
Ren says, "WELL, SOMEONE HAS TO DO IT! IT'S BEST WE JUST DO THIS NOW BEFORE-"
Ren's sentence was cut short as the tunnel ahead of them started to crumble down to reveal another tunnel. Yet the place reeks of something fowl as they cover their noses. Jaune takes a look inside and finds what looks like a sewer tunnel of some sort. The place reeks of shit, corpses and decay with all four of them trying not to loose their dinner. The place smells so bad that it makes them want to turn back. But Ren decides to move forward to explore the place. He shines the light from his helmet to get a good look at the place and noticed the amount of brickwork there is and a few unlit torches on some of the walls. He uses his shirt to cover his nose to filter out the nasty smell as he looks around to make sure it is safe.
Ren looks back at his team, "It's okay! Looks clear!"
"There's no way in hell I'm gonna go through the sewers!" Nebula complains. "A girl has to have standards!"
"As much as I hate to smell this," Octavia says to her leader, "I'm going. We're gonna need everything we can find if we want to stay safe. Who knows what the hell else is out there."
Nebula coughs and tries not to inhale any more fumes, "Alright, I'm going."
The two girls then follow Ren with Jaune behind them. Jaune uses two flint stones to light the torches which thankfully didn't start exploding the tunnel with all those gases stinking up the place. The reason for lighting the torches is so they can backtrack on where they have been at. They take a few turns through the tunnels while Nebula looks at the map while trying not to puke on it because it smells worse than a scavenger's ass in the sewers. They continue down until they reach the alchemist shop just on top of them.
Nebula looks at the map, "Okay, we should be right where the alchemist shop is. Yuri would like to have some plants and alchemical ingredients in order to learn on how to make potions." She puts the map away, "Just right above us."
"Got it." Jaune preps his auger and starts drilling a hole above everyone all the way up to the floor of the alchemist shop. He stops, "Alright, lets get what we can."
Octavia and Nebula pushes Jaune aside as they jumped out of the hole and try to find a bucket or something to throw-up in. They found a cauldron and just do what they had to do.
After Nebula gets done barfing, she whipped her mouth, "God I thought I never get to smell fresh air again!"
Octavia coughs a little, "Yeah. But we have no choice but to use the damn sewers to get around because of the storm."
"Fuck me."
Ren gets up and smells all the herbs and flowers to inhale the good scents to get rid of the smell.
Jaune joins in and inhales. "Oh man! That was the worst thing ever!"
"I agree. Maybe we should've gotten some gas masks before coming here."
"We should've."
Once everyone gets done taking in some fresh air...and some puking, everyone then looks around and noticed the place has a more viking feel to it. Or something similar back on Remnant.
"Huh." Nebula says. "This almost reminds me of some old time Mantle shops back before Atlas. I took a tour at a museum back in Vacuo when I was a kid."
"Well," Octavia says, "this place does have that feel to it."
Jaune looks at the corner of the store, "What is that?"
Everyone looks at the crafting station where Jaune is pointing. They approach a station that has all sorts of bottles and flasks with a medieval burner under one of them and the glasses are filled with some sort of green liquid. Ren takes a good look at the station and realizes what it is.
"It's an alchemy station." he says. "Can you guys hand me something I can use for making some sort of potion."
Jaune looked at the shelves and grabs wheat, hawk feathers, and a strange blue dragonfly of some sort and hand them to Ren. Ren takes the ingredients and mix them up in the alchemy station. Once he did, he made a potion of healing. He then shows the potion to everyone that he made along with proving that it is. However, Ren's alchemy skill levels up and he gains a level up to 138.
"Looks like we have something else to take back home with us."
"But can we wait for the storm to be over?" Octavia asks. "I don't want to carry that thing through the sewers."
"Okay." Ren agrees.
Everyone started to take as many of the plants as possible along with any other fungi or other things used in alchemy while Nebula managed to get a few books on alchemy and herbs. She even found a lot of papers with many potion recipes on them. However, there is something on her mind.
She looks at her group, "Hey, guys. Does anyone else find it weird that none of these ingredients got reduced to ash or have a whole lot of fungus growing all over."
Everyone stopped and realized what Nebula is saying. Jaune takes a look at the flowers and realized that the are fresh, unwilted, and no signs of any aging on it as all. Ren looks at the fungus on the shelves that he was about to take, but realized there aren't any fungus growing on the wooden beams or any other wooden areas which would cause the place to rot. The place is a little dusty, but no sign of any form of rot or decay. Even for a place that has been abandoned for centuries. Octavia also notice that some of the other ingredients such as fish, butterfly wings, wheat are still fresh despite the long abandonment that could've caused them to rot away.
"Well maybe the place kinda runs on video game logic." Jaune shrugs. "This place does sorta work that way...to some degree."
"Still mad about the whole T-shaped house coming down?" Ren asked. Noticing Jaune's pouting about the laws of physics of this world.
"Still am."
"Lets just focus on getting the stuff we need to get and get out." Octavia tries to keep everyone focus. While checking the drawers, she found some rags that might be useful. "Hey! I found some rags to cover our faces with so we won't have to smell the stink for long!"
"That sounds good." Ren complimented.
"I just need some water and probably some sort of herb to make it smell nice."
Jaune holds up some lavender, "Like some lavender?"
"That'll work. Thanks!" Octavia takes the lavender, rubs it on the rags, and dampen them in order to reduce the nasty odor from seeping in. "Okay. Four makeshift gas masks are ready."
"Thank you." Jaune says as he takes one of them.
Everyone else takes theirs after doing a thorough check on the shop to make sure they haven't missed anything right before heading down the sewers again. Thanks to their new gas masks, they can't smell the nasty fumes anymore.
"These gas masks are a great idea." Ren complimented again. "I don't feel like I wanna lose my dinner anymore."
"It's a trick I got from my mother when dealing with a few pigs." Octavia says. "And I mean actual pigs. Those things smelled like shit so she taught me to make an improvised gas mask before cleaning them up."
"You were a pig farmer before being a huntress?" Jaune asked.
"Yes." Octavia takes offense to that. "And I never want to smell them again."
"Sorry."
The four make their way towards their next destination which is the greenhouse. They didn't find any seeds in the alchemy shop so their gonna check the greenhouse to find some. However, Ren keeps looking back as if something is watching them. He keeps getting the strange feeling that there are eyes everywhere that is watching their every movement. Jaune keeps on lighting a few torches in the sewers to light the way with his two bits of flint that seems to be scaring them off and keeping them at a distance. Nebula is also taking a notice as well as she could've sworn she saw some movement ahead before Jaune lights the torch. Some sort of shadowy humanoid that was moving away. It looks sorta hunchback, tall with thin limbs, and it looked like it had a fin on its back and neck.
"Did anyone else see that?" Nebula says as she peers through the darkness.
"See what?" Jaune asked when he got done lighting another torch.
"I saw something moved up ahead. It look humanoid but not really. Hold on, let me get some light." Nebula starts to light up her pip-boy to see what is ahead.
"I didn't know we can use our pip-boys as lights."
"Oh. Kohta told me about it. A video gaming nerd actually does come in handy when trap in something that focuses on video game logic." She then uses the light of her pip-boy to illuminate the dank sewers to see what she saw.
When she slowly approaches the corner where she saw the strange figure while Jaune lights a few more torches. Nebula carefully takes a peek around the corner while shining her light down the dark, dank, stinky tunnel. On the other side of the tunnel she can see the light reflecting of off a pair of eyes that appeared. Then six dozen more eyes start to show as Nebula stares back at the small malevolent force that creeps to her slowly. The creatures slowly approach to reveal its grey and sickly blue skin with grey eyes that sends shiver down her spine.
"Oh shit!" Nebula retreated back as the creatures started to run straight at her while prepping her weapon.
The strange creatures started to get close at them as Ren fires a few rounds at the creatures which stopped them dead. A few more appeared from behind as Jaune grabs the torch and tries to scare them off. The creatures are terrified of the fast moving flame and kept their distances.
Realizing the creatures are afraid of the fire, he looked at Octavia, "Octavia, slash!"
"Roger!" Octavia pulled out her sword and uses her semblance to unleash an aerial slash that caught fire from Jaune's torch that set the creatures on fire.
The flaming creatures screamed in agony while being burned alive from the flames before dropping dead. But a few more of them started to appear from the other tunnels running through the muk. All four of them then started to use the flames spell they got from those spell tomes that started catching the creatures on fire while the rest flee for their lives.
Jaune pants, "What the hell where those things?"
"I don't know." Ren replies. "But we need to finish this quickly."
Everyone then head over towards the greenhouse as fast as they can with Jaune lighting the torches with firebolt just to keep track of where they've been. But they still use their pip-boy lights to shine the way to see if anymore of those disgusting creatures that claim the sewers their home. They managed to reach the spot.
"Okay!" Nebula says while out of breath and catching her breath. "Here!"
"Roger that!" Jaune pulls out his auger and starts digging through the floor of the greenhouse.
He drilled his way through until he can hear the sound of raindrops on glass despite the sound of the auger being loud.
"We're through!" he shouted. "Come on!" he then jumps out from the hole. "Lets grab whatever we can and head back!"
All four of them got out and started to take whatever they can from the herbs in the greenhouse along with anything else they can get their hands on. Luckily, Ren scored a complete book about plants and fungus that have been catagorized in the greenhouse. After less than five minutes, everyone went down to the hole and run back towards the library.
"Come on!" Octavia takes the lead. "We need to warn the others about this!"
They all ran and ran with the effects of their gas masks about to wore off and the smell starting to seep into the fabric with the scent of lavender mixed in. They then managed to reach the entrance to the connecting basement. Luckily, it looks like non of the creatures made it through. Jaune and Ren ran upstairs to see if everyone else is alright. The two bashed the door down and sees that everyone is alright. Nora and Pyrrha were learning how to play gwent from Gwen and Dew. Yuri and Kohta were busy reading some of the books while Toshimi and Winter are on the second level. Making sure that there aren't any more undead creatures coming in. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at the returning team.
"Is everyone alright!?" Ren asked franticly.
"We're fine." Nora says calmly.
Pyrrha stands up while putting her cards down, "What happened?"
Jaune tries to reply while panting, "Nasty. Scaly. Monsters. Whoo!"
"What type of monsters?" Winter asked while looking down from the second level.
"We don't know." Octavia says as she enters the room. "But there were plenty of them in the sewers."
"Is that what I'm smelling?" Dwen looked a little disgusted as she can smell the disgusting odor.
Nebula, from behind Jaune and Ren, smells herself and feels like she is gonna puke.
"We should be focusing on the creatures." Pyrrha says, "They are an immediate concern." She pulls out her witcher bestiary books and sees what type of monsters they came into contact with.
Nebula says, "They're gray with blue hands and feet. Dead fish eyes and have fins on their backs."
"Let me see." Pyrrha glances through the book until she finds the creature Nebula described. "Here it is! It is called, drowner. Corpses of drowned victims that got turned into an aquatic undead creature that lurks in any form of water while dragging their victims below to create more. Yet despite being aquatic in nature, they are known for having a weakness against fire."
Octavia gives Pyrrha an odd look and a little confused. "Okay, first off, how the hell can a corpse become a fishy humanoid? Second, how is it possible for something that drowned to just come back looking like a lagoon monster from a horror movie when they could've just came back as some bloated corpse filled with water? Third, how is it possible for a creature that spends most of its time in water to be weak against fire? Shouldn't be fucking immune to fire?"
Pyrrha shrugs, "I don't know. I'm just reading from this book."
"Well good news is..." Jaune pulled out a bag, "We got plenty of herbs and alchemy ingredients from the alchemy shop and greenhouse."
"I'll check!" Yuri volunteers. "But first, can you guys take a bath? You guys stink!"
AN: What's up! Hope you guys love this series so far. Not to mention the new season of RWBY is out! I will add characters from that series into here real soon depending on the update on the RWBY wikia because I need some info on how to spell their names and abilities. Anyways, Happy Halloween, Happy Birthday Ruby Rose, and hope to see you guys later. See ya'!
Additional: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention something. The community I am manager of, RWBY Fans Crossovers, now has over 101 subscribers! You guys are awesome! Hope we can keep up the good work! Later dudes!