Volume 10 Bugs Chapter 68 Let Me Meet You
I stood at the entrance of the rubble fortress, with the rotten bones of mutant creatures scattered behind me. The air was filled with a rotten stench, and that evil smell seemed to be ready to greedily erode the entire world at any time. I was already familiar with this smell - it was the smell of the polluted poison that the minions of the apocalyptic king were trying to develop to wipe out all living things on the Falvi continent.
The huge and dilapidated fortress gate stood in front of me, with one heavy door panel leaning against the city wall, and the other door was nowhere to be found. A transparent vortex was spinning constantly in the gate, almost stirring up all the light into a circle of turbulent flow, making it impossible to see the scene behind the door. If you look closely, you can also find some tiny particles glittering and flashing in this huge vortex, emitting a dazzling magical brilliance.
After passing this vortex, I will enter the interior of the fortress. I don't know what will greet me there. The old troll Carlson said that if I come to find him, he will find me, but no one knows how long it will take. I don't want to wait until he finds me to see a miserable corpse with half of its head eaten off by those half-dead polluters. Thinking of the endless stream of level 51 decayed monsters "Carrion Eaters" that came up last time I entered here, and the artificial monster "Three-Headed Polluter Merril" that almost took our lives, I couldn't help but feel cold in my heart. I gripped the weapon in my hand more tightly, held the shield firmly in front of my chest, and bravely plunged into the vortex of light and shadow in front of me.
"Oh la oh la oh la oh la..." As soon as I passed through the turbulence of space, I immediately raised the sword in my hand high, roared to the sky in a heroic manner, and used the skill of "Courageous Battle Call" without hesitation, which increased my attack power and defense power in a short time.
Then……
I stood like a fool in a lightless yet bright hut, holding a shield in one hand and wielding a sword in the other. My muscles were stiff as I opened my mouth wide, swallowing back the half-shout that had not yet come out of my mouth, and looking in amazement at the old troll in front of me who was looking at me with a smirk on his face.
"I thought..." He held up a clay bowl in his hand, "...a well-educated young warrior would at least know to knock on the door first when visiting an elder."
As he said this, he raised his head and poured the hot soup into his mouth. The soup kept flowing down the edges of his huge fangs and soon soaked his clothes - I guess this is the main reason why all trolls always look dirty.
"Of course, if you can really find the door here..." I looked at the space sealed by the walls and put the weapon in my hand back to my waist in dismay, "...When did you find me?"
"Just now, the moment you walked in." Carlson spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders - this should have been a gesture of relaxation, but when it happened to this hunchbacked old troll, it always made people feel like this guy was trying hard to stuff his head into his stomach.
"Just now? How did you have time..." I was very surprised by his words. You know, it took me less than one-fifth of a second to step through the vortex, how could he find me so quickly?
"You are nothing special, my friend." Carlson interrupted me with a wave of his hand. "You should know that in my eyes, time passes slowly in microseconds. I can perceive more things in a moment than you can perceive in your entire life. You will understand all this sooner or later. Before that, please sit down, my friend."
I was just about to ask him where he planned for me to sit in this empty, narrow confinement room when I immediately noticed that a fine and sturdy oak chair had suddenly appeared behind me.
"It looks familiar..." I sat down on the chair, reached out to touch the pattern on the armrest, and suddenly remembered something, "...it seems to be the one that Black Jazz often sits on. Did you copy one?" I asked curiously.
"That's not actually the case..." The old troll nodded with some pride, "...You know, copying means increasing the total amount, which is a very dangerous thing and it's hard to escape the eyes of the gods. This is just a low-level trick. You know, the chair is still with Black Knight, it just 'appears' here at the same time. Although it looks like it's here, it's actually not here. You can think of it as a projection of nothingness that doesn't exist in reality, but now you can actually use it here..."
"Okay, okay, okay, just pretend I didn't ask anything." I groaned and pressed my forehead with both hands. If he didn't stop talking, I was afraid I would be the first pathetic life in the world to be troubled to death by a chair.
"Come to think of it, you've arrived much earlier than I thought. I originally thought you would have to wait at least another two or three weeks before you could come to see me. I hope those guys guarding the door don't cause you too much trouble." As he said this, Carlson also sat down on another identical chair that was "not there but available for sitting on."
"They are not easy to deal with, but..." I patted my armor: "...as you can see, my friend bought me a good set of equipment."
He looked my equipment up and down, nodded in agreement, and then waved his hand. Suddenly, a warm bonfire appeared between me and Carlson, and a huge clay pot was placed on the fire, and some light green juice was boiling in the pot. Carlson took out a clay bowl from nowhere and scooped a bowl of hot soup from the pot.
"Would you like a bowl?" He extended the bowl in front of me in a friendly manner. "This is the traditional way of hospitality among the trolls. Although you are not a very polite guest, I don't want to be an uneducated host."
"Thank you! What kind of soup is this?" I took the bowl from him and said with a teasing smile, "According to what you said, I guess it should be called 'a soup that is not soup even though it is not drinkable and still drinkable even after drinking it.'"
Old Carlson smiled and nodded, tacitly agreeing with what I said.
This troll-specific drink probably contains a refreshing taste of some plant. It's a bit spicy, a bit sweet, with a bitter aftertaste and a peculiar medicinal taste, but to be fair, it's not that bad to drink.
…well, at least it tasted good until I saw the boiled snake head, bat wings, and rat paws that had been gnawed to the bone at the bottom of the bowl…
"vomit……"
"This soup is called 'Teddysino', a favorite drink of our troll tribe, just like the wine of you humans and dwarves..." The old troll looked at me kindly as I rinsed my mouth with the large bottle of potion in my backpack, and said slowly, "... Even so, I don't want to taste it often. To be honest, it's mainly because the toad skin in it makes me feel a little nauseous."
Toad skin? I originally thought that the slippery stuff was just some special fungus or moss. The saddest thing is that I sucked it on the tip of my tongue twice with extra force, and I thought it tasted pretty good...
A strong physiological reaction occurred in my internal organs. I felt as if a rapidly rotating hurricane appeared in my abdominal cavity, causing all the fishy and sour gastric juice to churn back and forth in my stomach. This feeling was so strong that I couldn't help but use that one word to express my uncontrollable strong desire at the moment:
"vomit……"
…
"Since you don't like it yourself, why did you give it to me?" After a long while, I collapsed back on the chair exhausted and asked very weakly - to be honest, now even if I tried hard to make a ferocious expression of "glaring at him fiercely", I felt very difficult.
"I thought you would like it more than me." The troll witch doctor Carlson showed no shame. "You know, I have never stepped out of the fortress, so I know very little about human eating habits..."
To be honest, I don’t believe !
The only consolation I had was that, strictly speaking, I was drinking a bowl of soup that didn't exist. It had never been here, it was just a projection. Which meant that I hadn't actually drunk anything: a snake head, a bat wing, a mouse's paw, a toad's skin, or something else - God, that thought made me feel a little warm in my stomach.
But the toad skin that had never existed was really chewy.
"vomit……"
…
After showing me the trolls' thoughtful and warm traditional hospitality, Carlson suddenly fell silent. He sat hunched in a chair, looking at me with a smile, the bright color of the bonfire flickering in his pupils, as if making his deep and turbid eyes warm. He looked at me with interest, as if he was appreciating something very interesting.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" He was looking at me in a way that made me feel a little uncomfortable.
"I'm just a little curious about what you want to tell me." Old Carlson grinned. It's strange, even though that big mouth with two fangs looks very ferocious, and each of his teeth has turned into an ugly gray-yellow, but I can still see a kind of wise tranquility in his smile.
"What did you say?" I was a little embarrassed, and subconsciously argued, "How do you know that I must have something to say to you..." Under his confident smile, my voice of rebuttal had no confidence at all, each word became lower and lower, and finally there was no sound.
"Don't be so stubborn, my young friend. You came all the way here to see me, not just to show off your beautiful new clothes to this old, ugly blue guy in front of you, right?" The troll witch doctor's smile turned mischievous. "Looking at your absent-minded look, I just need to write 'I have something to say' on your forehead with a quill pen."
I raised my hands helplessly. "Okay, you're right. I did encounter some problems recently and have been looking for someone to talk to. But... you know , there are some things that I find difficult to find the right person to discuss, so I came to you."
"A few weeks ago, I met a girl who..."
I told him all about Marianne, leaving out even the smallest detail—in fact, I had never thought of relating it to another person in such detail that I was surprised even to myself at my own ability to remember so many of the little details.
When you really find someone you completely trust and start to confide in him, it's like a tiny crack in a dam. At first, only a trickle of water flows out of this inconspicuous gap, but slowly, your words will gush out more and more intensely with your emotions until the gap is completely broken and becomes an unstoppable torrent. Eventually, you will dig out the most precious and secret memories in your mind, let them out along with every bit of emotion accumulated in your heart, and share them with the friend in front of you.
The Supreme God once taught us: sharing happiness with others, becomes two happiness; sharing pain with others, only half pain is left. This is definitely one of the wisest words I have ever heard. As I narrated, I felt that the depression that had been weighing on my heart for the past few weeks gradually subsided, and the warm and sweet feeling when I first met Marianne quietly resurfaced in my heart. I suddenly found that I was no longer afraid to face my memories, and I no longer had to deliberately avoid the profile of that extremely lovely and extremely desperate side in my impression. The pain and depression in my heart that had nowhere to struggle gradually turned into a gentle emotion mixed with a hint of youth and a hint of sweetness, and was quietly placed in the depths of my memory, just like a sad famous painting, a sad text, a sad and beautiful sculpture. Although it still makes people sigh when recalling it, it has become something that people can appreciate repeatedly, and has become a secret but beautiful scenery in my heart.
"…That's it, I left there. At that time, I wanted to look back at her so much, I said to myself: Let me take a look, just one look. But in the end, I didn't. I was afraid, I was afraid that I would never have the courage to take my eyes off her, I was afraid that I would be trapped like this and never get out, I was afraid of my fate, I was afraid of everything, so…I just left like that. I know she is there, I know how to find her, but until now, I have never been there a second time…" I spoke quietly to Carlson, my tone was so calm that even I was a little surprised. I felt a little wet in the corners of my eyes, but the tears did not fall. Looking back, when I told these, my heart was not more sad, but a kind of happiness:
Sometimes I turn away;
It takes more than courage;
Sometimes we pass by each other;
those who stayed;
It’s not just helplessness;
It was just a chance encounter on the bank of a river called "love";
I'm here;
And you;
There;
Why swim across the river?
Why do we have to sit together?
In this landscape of life;
You have adorned me;
I have also marked you;
Your gentle silhouette;
Just like that it folds into memory;
Don't complain, don't sigh;
I only thank fate;
Let me;
once;
Meet you;
…
When I had said all this, I sat there quietly, looking at old Carlson as he was looking at me.
"Don't you want to say something to me now?" I asked him.
"Do you need me to say anything more now?" he asked me.
Coincidentally, we looked at each other and smiled.
"Thank you!" I said sincerely. If I were alone, I don't know how long I could carry this heavy burden, and my weak soul would collapse at any moment. Fortunately, there is such a person. Although he is not of my same race, he is the only one in the world who can understand me. He is my friend and also like my father. He is willing and able to share with me these frustrations and pains that only I will encounter in this world. He makes me feel no longer lonely, so I am deeply grateful to him.
"Thank you!" He also said to me sincerely, with a trace of envy and loss in his eyes. I understood what he meant. He was a lonely old man imprisoned by fate, and he would be imprisoned in this broken fortress for the rest of his life, accompanied by endless repetitive fighting. He was not as lucky as me, who could learn from those strange and ordinary people who dabble in space, learn how to live, learn the meaning of life, learn ideals, and learn to try to look forward to the future. He only had a soul that was born incomplete, but he could not perfect it.
The story I brought him was an invaluable life experience for him. Maybe he would learn some love from it, maybe he would learn some melancholy from it, maybe he would feel some sweetness from it, or maybe he could grieve with me... No matter what it was, it was all so precious to him. You know, for this poor old man who had been locked out of fate, even being able to feel pain was already such a happy thing.
I accepted his gratitude as readily as he should have done to me.
"Is that girl pretty?" Suddenly, he seemed to remember something and asked me with interest.
"Yes, very beautiful. Maybe in the eyes of many people, she is just an ordinary bakery girl, but to me, she may be the most beautiful woman in the world."
"Then her forehead must be high and full, her feet must be thick, her nose must be very curved, and she must have a pair of tall and sharp fangs."
…
Well, I've said it before, aesthetics and wisdom have nothing to do with each other.
