Nope.

Whoever or whatever had designed the skill wasn’t that lazy, or generous, or whatever it was they were.

Milo had tested the idea by simply floating on his binder while testing the max speed of his textbook, then testing it again after dismounting; it was significantly faster in the second case.

Too bad. He would have been a freaking god, his strength limited only by the number of books he could acquire.

Instead, Milo was left with a bitter taste in his mouth as he realized that flying out of his enemies’ reach and wielding his book at the same time wouldn’t be nearly as potent of a combination as he’d initially envisioned. He could no doubt still do some damage with it; he’d simply need a longer run to get the book up to devastating speeds. The modifier had probably still been a good investment. Time would tell.

Milo was getting low on mana. He didn’t feel the need to refill back up to eight just to move forward, but having at least six was probably a good idea. He spent the wait knocking back a couple more bottles of Soylent and voiding his bowels, lamenting deeply the lack of toilet paper.

Where that was concerned, he had his choice of one of his nice sheets of paper, his hand, or... a rock. There were technically other choices, but he didn’t feel like losing a piece of clothing every time he needed to take a dump.

Honestly, what do other people do in situations like this? He'd heard there were cultures that really did use one of their hands for wiping in everday life—the left, he was pretty sure—but there was no way he was doing that.

A few minutes later, he tossed a smooth, sullied rock into the distance, the sound of its impact reverberating around the cave. Grimacing, he collected his things and marched into the labyrinth of stalagmites.

Milo’s mana was still regenerating, so he felt no need to fly above everything for now. If he got hopelessly lost, he could always take to the air. Also, there was something he wanted among the pillars of stone.

Feathers.

Who knew if they’d come in handy, but better to have and not need than to need and not have.

He happened on one of the cassowary corpses after only a few minutes, kneeling down and very, very carefully plucking several of them without touching the extremely sharp edges with his fingers. The poison-induced fear had been levels above the one caused by the birds’ cries, and he wasn’t anxious to experience it a second time.

Milo put the feathers in the two bottles of Soylent he’d just consumed, which he'd rinsed out with a little water from his system-provided canteen. He was still doing okay on water, but he made sure to drink the rinsewater anyway, unwilling to waste any of it. He didn’t know how long it would be before he would have a chance to refill.

In video games, it was common to loot kills, acquiring things like eyeballs or venom sacs or tainted hearts—weird stuff. Weird stuff that would somehow sell for silver or gold, probably for alchemical purposes. Milo briefly considered cutting off its head in the off-chance that its comparatively enormous horn or glowing eyes were worth something, but dismissed that line of thinking fairly quickly. He wasn’t going to tromp around through the rest of the Descent with a bunch of rotting monster parts stashed away with his gear. Feathers were good for now.

Milo managed to cram about ten of the smallest feathers he could find into each bottle, stem up for easy access, before moving on.

He never figured out the labyrinth. All the stalagmites looked the same, and he kept getting turned around. Once, he’d found an exit...that led right back out to the delta where he’d started. Feeling foolish, he’d turned around and tried for a little while longer before giving up once he reached nine mana again and simply flew to the far exit. He consoled himself that he could have found a way through if he lacked the flying option. Eventually.

He imagined trying to navigate through that while harried by the cries of cassowaries, mind clouded with magically-induced fear. He shuddered.

Touching down, Milo peered forward into the relative darkness of the entrance to the next section. It looked to be just more of the same tunnels he’d spent the majority of his time in so far. He could see a sconce with a torch a little ways in.

Glad for the relatively familiar sight, Milo tucked both of his books under his arm and proceeded inside.

To his surprise, the path began trending upwards. It didn’t last long, however. Not even ten minutes later, the tunnel broadened in a major way and descended precipitously into a long series of narrow switchbacks.

After staring down for a few moments, he realized with a start that he could see moving shapes scattered along the steep trail. The lighting was dim and it was hard to tell for sure, but he thought there was a mix of both fleshhungry skeleroos and ‘very scary’ cassowaries.

Milo crept back and dropped to his belly, peering down to study the situation below with only his head visible in case one of the creatures glanced up.

Okay, at first glance this is kind of a dream situation. They have to climb up to get me, which will slow them down, and I can just keep picking them off. The trail is so narrow that they won’t really have anywhere to go if they want to dodge my book. Is there something I’m missing here?

Milo activated Skim, confirming that they were indeed a mix of cassowaries and roos, three and five respectively. A general search for creatures of any kind revealed nothing beyond that.

He also took the opportunity to look for the trail of skeleroo tracks he’d been following earlier, finding that it went straight down the switchbacks as expected; there wasn’t really anywhere else for them to have gone.

Pretty cool that it lets me pick out the tracks of a particular group of roos. He’d specifically looked for ‘tracks from roos whose tracks I’ve Skimmed before’. From what he knew of Skim, the prints wouldn’t have lit up if the prompt had been unworkable. That made it a pretty potent tracking skill.

Filing that little perk away, Milo returned his attention to the situation at hand. It really looked like a straightforward, easy situation...which made him wary.

Still, after a minute more spent wracking his brain for ways that this could go horribly wrong, every possibility he could think of just seemed too unlikely. He would technically be breaking his rule about engaging multiple enemies at once, but it should be simple enough to retreat if things seemed to be getting out of hand.

The biggest issue was visibility. The monsters’ forms were difficult to make out in the dim torchlight. That would make aiming for vulnerable areas much more challenging, especially if he had difficulty making out his book as well. It was easy enough with Skim active, though…

Milo waited until he was once more at nine mana before activating Skim a second time, focusing on both the enemies and his weapon.

Sweet, glow in the dark. It would be a bit like playing laser tag in a darkened arcade...except he was the only kid with a gun.

Not seeing a reason to waste any more time, he sent his battle book down and began laying waste to his enemies.

He started with the uppermost cassowary, ignoring the two closer roos for the time being in favor of starting with the greater threat. He broke the bird's neck with an incisive strike, dropping it to the ground. There was no kill notification, but that was fine; it was out of commission. He could finish it later, after he’d neutralized all the active threats.

None of the other creatures seemed to notice what Milo had done, but he wasn’t so lucky with the second cassowary. Annoyingly, it decided to peck at something on the ground the moment he swooped in with the book, causing the strike to merely graze its bent neck instead of snapping it as he’d intended. It jerked its head up, squawking and looking behind itself for whatever had hit it. Fortunately, this gave Milo the opportunity to catch it unawares with the book on the return pass, killing it with the blow—but now the cat was out of the bag.

Numerous cough-like grunts erupted from below Milo, along with a single, keening cry from the remaining cassowary.

-

You hear the cassowary’s cry, and you know fear.

-

Dang it. Milo had really been hoping to avoid that.

Now fighting the strong urge to turn around and not stop until he reached the safety of the stalagmites, he blasted his book toward the last demonic-looking bird. Predictably, it dodged nimbly to the side.

Milo, ready for this, mentally hauled the book backwards immediately, diving it under the bird and repeating the trick he’d used before to upend the previous wary cassowary he’d fought. This time, however, he purposely pushed it off the side of the trail, balancing it atop the book as long as he could to get as much empty air underneath it as possible before dropping it.

As it started to plummet, toppling from his book with a shriek, Skim’s duration ran out, making the bird appear to vanish. He promptly re-upped the skill, just in time to see it impact the ground and begin tumbling toward the bottom of the steep incline, where more light pooled in through an arched opening from whatever area lay ahead. It seemed unable to arrest its momentum.

Satisfied that it was out of the picture at least for now, he spent another mana for twenty more seconds of Fetch Book and drew his weapon back toward him. Six mana remaining.

While he’d been fighting the cassowary, a couple of the roos had drawn uncomfortably close with their massive leaps, skipping whole sections of trail. They must have incredible night vision, because they'd clearly spotted him. Either that, or they had somehow deduced that the source of the chaos in their ranks must be coming from above. The roos were still far enough away that they shouldn’t be a problem in the next several seconds, but the cassowary’s fear effect was still running its course and their clattering approach was making him nervous.

Milo stood up, ready to move now if needed. At the same time, he drew the book back up the slope. He waited until one of the roos was mid-flight, then slammed the book toward it as hard as the skill would allow.

Frustratingly, this skeleroo seemed tougher than the ones Milo had fought previously. It weathered the hit, which had impacted it roughly halfway up the spine. It even got a little boost from the impact, drawing closer to Milo. The roo landed awkwardly, however, its progress slowed overall.

The book didn’t stick with the creature, glancing off slightly to the side after striking. That actually took it slightly toward the other one, which had pulled a bit ahead. Milo rolled with it and took a shot at the second skeleroo. He aimed for the spot where its skull met its fragile neck, rather than where the bones were broader and thicker further down.

A whiff.

It hadn’t even dodged; Milo had simply timed it slightly wrong, his focus slipping as the skeletal kangaroos approached his position and fear wormed its way into his heart.

Calm down, take your time, it’s still a couple of big jumps until they make it to the top.

Doing his best to focus despite his racing heart, Milo readied himself to strike the second one the next time it leapt.

Out of nowhere, something hard struck him painfully right in the face, hitting him across his mouth and cheekbone. Milo spun back and away, recoiling automatically from the blow. He tasted blood.

What the…?!

Something else whirred out of the darkness to hit him, this time catching him across the ribs. His ‘cloth armor’ absorbed some of the impact, but it felt hard enough still to bruise.

Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope.

Finally listening to the gibbering voice of cowardice that was now screaming at him to flee, he hopped on his binder and sped away, calling his textbook after him. He didn’t stop until he was back on the far side of the stalagmites from the tunnel entrance, spending two more mana to fly the entire way at a sprinting pace. He held onto his textbook while he sat on the binder, using the two together for improved balance at the reckless speeds he was going.

Finally, he touched down at the delta, hopefully safe from whatever the hell those projectiles were.

What was that?