Deacon let out a grunt as he pulled taut a vine, arms straining slightly as he looped it around a couple of the thick logs that made up the side floor of the wall. "Why did I choose to build this one fifty five damn meters high?" He muttered to himself as sweat clung to his temple, beading along the sides of his face as he worked. "Oh, right, because even a monkey would be able to see the base if it were on the floor or around the midsection of the trees."
The treehouse platform sprawled across the treetops of eight massive trees, interconnected by their nearby branches. The floor alone stretched an impressive twelve meters wide by eight meters long, sturdy with interlocked logs laid crosswise and bound tight with braided vines and hardened bellroot sap.
And now he was beginning to build the walls of the treehouse base.
So far, all along the sides of the treehouse, except for the one he was currently working on, there was the base frame of a wall. He was fastening the second log to both the log beneath it and to the two tree trunks beside it.
Despite the annoying heat that was already starting to peel his skin and how labor-intensive it was to drag logs from across the island and pull them to the top with a pulley, he couldn't help but admire how the build was shaping up. You gotta love Builder Mack and his glorious Base Building Tutorials.
Even without any camouflage netting or illusions layered on top, the structure already blended well with the treetops. He'd used logs that looked very similar to the logs of the eight trees he was around and even darkened them with sap and various leaves and branches to match the tones of the jungle. However, there was a pile of moss directly beneath the floor of the base, as that unfortunately hadn't been able to stick.
He was completely zoned in to the point where he hadn't even noticed that a bird landed inside the base with a soft chirp, eyeing him briefly, and danced around in place before flying away.
Deacon gave the end of the vine one final tug, tied it off, and brought out his dagger from behind his back to cut away the excess vine before stepping back, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist.
He smirked to himself. "Not bad for a guy who almost got yanked out of a rowboat this morning, eh?"
Deacon let out a long breath as he stepped back to assess the newly secured section of the last remaining wall he needed to set up.
He wiped his palms on his leather legguards and turned before making his way to the edge of the platform, where a thick vine was tied off to one of the anchor branches. From there, he lifted up the trapdoor and grabbed hold of the thick and braided vine attached to the treehouse and began rappelling down the side of one of the massive trees.
After about thirty seconds of rappelling, his boots hit jungle floor with a muted thump.
"Alright, just gotta do this like six or so more times," he muttered, brushing aside the low-hanging ferns in his way and stepping over the pile of moss beneath the base.
One of the logs he'd pre-cut and rolled here earlier was leaned up against a flat stone. Deacon crouched beside it and lifted it onto his shoulder, where he then took it to where he set up his pulley system. From there, he grabbed the pulley cord from the lowest branch of the tree and tied the log into the harness with three fast knots before quickly rescaling back up the tree house.
Once he got up, he went over to the other end of the vine pulley, the one inside the treehouse, and began to pull the log upwards, utilizing all his points into Strength and Endurance.
"Come on, you heavy bastard," he grunted, tightening his grip and bracing his boots against the edge of the platform for leverage. The cord bit into his hands and forearms as he pulled, but he ignored the pain the vine cord caused as the log continued to rise, inch by inch, until it reached the base of the backside platform of the treehouse, where he then quickly fastened the vine around a nearby pillar base.
Leaning on the side of one of the nearby walls, he took a quick breather before reaching out and grabbing the log with both hands to guide it carefully over the platform's edge and into the base.
"One down… Let's get you dressed up," he said while wiping the sweat off from around his eyes with the back of his right forearm.
He quickly freed the knots and grabbed a wad of thickened tree sap from the bark of one of the eight pillar trees around him before he ran the viscous sap along the base and sides of the new log, smearing it with practiced efficiency after having had to do this for the eightieth or so time before fitting it in line with the others. Once the log was in position, he grabbed a coil of vine and began tying it down, cinching it tight against the existing structure.
The vine slipped slightly under his hand as he pulled it taut around the freshly coated log. Deacon frowned, adjusted the tension, and was mid-knot when something shifted below.
A faint rustle.
His fingers paused.
It wasn't wind, there hadn't been a breeze in the past quarter of an hour, and the surrounding canopy was still as stone. Not to mention, the jungle suddenly became quiet at the moment, leaving only the slow parting of tall fronds and thick-bellied bushes near the jungle floor as the only sound around.
Deacon's gaze snapped to the movement, his body still crouched low beside the unfinished wall. He narrowed his eyes through the overhanging leaves. There, he thought to himself as he saw a large patch of ferns on the jungle floor twenty meters away from the base of the leftmost pillar tree tremble unnaturally.
His body shifted instinctively, his right hand slid away from the log and down to the small of his back, where they then wrapped around the hilts of Echoform Reliquary as it was in its dual short sword form.
While still crouched, he leaned slightly toward the edge of the treehouse platform in an attempt to get a better line of sight with what was hiding in the fronds. The pulley creaked slightly in the windless air, a sound too loud now in the strange hush that had settled over the jungle.
"Could just be a boar," he murmured under his breath. "I've seen a couple of them on the way getting here."
The brush below shifted again, this time a meter to the left, confirming that whatever was moving wasn't standing still.
Deacon's eyes flicked along the tree line and the placement of the vines leading up to the platform. No sign of someone trying to climb.
The leaves shifted again, just enough to catch the light and flash silver on the underside of a fern, then another movement, barely a whisper. Two shadows emerged – humanoid ones.
Deacon tensed. His grip tightened around the hilts of Echoform Reliquary.
Then he caught sight of what he thought to be a boar... Jass.
She stepped partially into the clearing, brushing aside the last layer of ferns. Her sharp eyes scanned the treetops, her shoulders drawn high in suspicion. Behind her, Esmerelda followed, one hand held over her eyes to shield them from the light bleeding through the canopy. Her other hand was holding up her Status Page, probably checking their Party tab for his location and wondering why the arrow pointed the both of them here.
Deacon's lips twitched upward in a wry smile as the tension almost instantly drained from his limbs. For a moment, he'd felt sick, like genuinely ready to throw up, as a flood of worst-case scenarios hit him when he saw those humanoid silhouettes come into view: another group finding his base, forcing him to pack up, relocate, rebuild.
Getting up from his crouch, still hidden behind the overcast of leaves, and let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Oi!" he called down. "You two stalking boars or me?"
Both heads snapped up.
"Deacon?!" Esmerelda's voice rose in surprise.
Jass squinted, finally spotting the faint movement through the green lattice above. "How the hell are you up there? We didn't even—wait, is that a base?"
"Yep." Deacon stepped fully into view now, arms slightly outstretched in mock presentation. "Welcome to my rooftop paradise. Still under construction."
"You built that thing up there?" Esmerelda asked as she stuffed her Status Page back into one of her pouches and held a hand over her eyes.
"Well, technically, I'm building it." He said, pointing out the large gap in the last remaining wall. "Still a few dozen logs away from calling it luxury real estate."
Jass snorted and pointed at the tree closest to him. "So, how do we get up? Please don't say 'climb thirty meters of vine with no support'."
Deacon grinned and pointed to a side branch near the base of the leftmost pillar tree. "There's a knotted climbing rope on the north side. I looped it through a harness bracket about halfway up. Take that to the top branch, then you'll hit the base platform from there."
"Of course, I gotta climb even more while in this heat," Esmerelda groaned, already heading toward the spot with Jass right behind her.
"Hey, I didn't say it'd be easy," Deacon quipped as he turned back toward the unfinished log wall and the seconds of bark that needed to be coated. "You two bring any beer with you? I'm dying for one with all this heat."
The rope creaked slightly as Jass reached the final branch and pulled herself onto the treehouse platform with a grunt. Esmerelda wasn't far behind, her boots thudding softly against the tree's trunk, and upon getting up onto the platform, she immediately flopped onto her back and began fanning her face with one hand.
"Spirits… you really had to build this high up?" she panted.
"With the things I've seen in the past three days I've been here, you wouldn't want to live on the ground floor," Deacon replied with a grin, extending a hand to the both of them – offering pieces of recently made jerky.
Jass didn't answer right away, she was busy staring out at the emerald expanse that spread beneath them. "Okay... that view might make up for the sweat," she muttered.
"Yeah, yeah," Deacon said, motioning them both toward the partial shade near the completed section of the wall. "Now come on, spill. What the hell took you two so long to finish Floor Two? We entered it at the same time, how was it that I finished three days before you two?"
At that, Esmerelda groaned. "Don't even get me started."
Jass dropped her pack beside her and leaned back on her hands. "We got thrown into a Group Quest."
"A Group Quest?" Deacon asked, eyebrows rising. "But then you should have finished it earlier than me, with the numbers advantage."
"Right?" Jass sighed, brushing her bangs out of her face. "It was supposed to be five of us, but, get this, two of them got cocky during the third wave. Charged ahead thinking they'd mow down the Wigggenedwights early and, bam! They died just after they killed the last ones, because they forgot that they bleed poison and refused to listen to us."
"They didn't even wait for me to renew their shielding spells," Esmerelda muttered, her voice tinged with bitterness. "We told them to wait, and that we should kite them, but… You get the picture."
Deacon winced.
"Yup," Jass said. "And then our archer got fucked up during the fourth wave. I mean properly fucked up, like I could see her intestines-type of fucked up… She survived, though, but in order to heal, she was placed somewhere safe so we could focus."
"So, it was just the two of you for the rest of the waves?" Deacon asked in slight disbelief.
Esmerelda nodded. "Yup. And I swear, if I find one more mutated leech beast in my life, I'm just going to save myself the time and just burn the whole forest down."
Deacon let out a low whistle. "Damn. That explains the delay."
"Also explains why we didn't bring beer," Jass added dryly, reaching over to pluck a leaf out of her hair. "We were too busy trying not to die."
Deacon chuckled, settling down on a crossbeam beside them. "You know I was pretty close to shitting my pants with how low I saw your health bars drop on the Party tab."
Esmerelda tilted her head at him. "Aw, Deke. You do care."
He smirked. "I just didn't wanna lose my base builders for the next couple of days."
Jass gave him a playful punch to the arm.
"Besides," Deacon continued, lifting his canteen, "you still owe me a round of drinks from when I soloed that river eel three weeks back for you because you were too busy to complete the assignment for Mr. Brunner."
"Oh yeah?" Esmerelda said, raising a brow. "You sure you didn't hallucinate that while heat stroked and talking to frogs again?"
"I'll have you know that frog was very wise," Deacon shot back. "And he gave great advice about how to catch flies."
They all became quiet for a few seconds, letting Deacon's words stew before they all broke into laughter.