Feeling better, I'm about to tell Inv to start eating the 2 dead lizards until I'm suddenly pulled into Inv's embrace.
"Dat gud… I wel du beter nex tim…" I hear Inv say somewhere above my head. Feeling surprised by the sudden hug from Inv I find myself not able to respond.
…
'This would be nicer if there wasn't so much blood… this is still nice though…' I think to myself as I try to wrap my arms around Inv.
Letting the moment last for a sec I break the silence.
"Alright Inv, you gotta eat these lizards. We can… continue this when we're back at the shelter" I say this to Inv as I reluctantly let go of Inv.
"O-oh… u wight…" I hear Inv murmur out as he lets me go.
Being let go I can now say I'm also covered in blood. This feels terrible but I'll just have to deal with it until we're back at the shelter.
Noticing my bloodied appearance I see Inv's ears somewhat droop down.
"I-i sory… I wasn tinkin-
"Inv, it's fine. Like I said earlier, we can always clean it up later in the shelter" I immediately assure Inv I'm fine. If he thinks some blood is gonna keep me away from him then he's completely wrong.
With the quick response Inv's ears quickly shoot back up.
"A-alrigh! Leme go gwab the lizar ove dere!" Inv says to me while quickly running over to the lizard he killed earlier by snapping its neck.
Watching Inv, I see him pick up the lizard by the head and start effortlessly dragging it back next to the other dead lizard. Not surprised by Inv's strength at this point I calculate some things in my head.
With the dropwig Inv ate earlier and adding these 2 cyan lizards that should be about… 7 and a half food pips? This is a pretty decent haul so far considering we haven't reached the swarm room yet.
If Inv does have 12 food pips then he only needs 4 and a half more… perfect! If we can safely reach the swarm room there should be enough batflys to fill both me and Inv!
While thinking this I see Inv put the dead lizard he was dragging next to the other one. Immediately getting on all 4's I see him get ready to start eating… until he looks back at me?
Not sure why Inv stopped himself from eating, I walk up beside him. Looking up at me I see an… expectant look in his eyes? Wondering to myself for a second I raise my paw up and start gently stroking Inv's back.
Feeling my touch, I can feel Inv lean further into my pets, feeling a subtle purr come from him.
Burrrr~
After doing this for a moment Inv focuses back onto the dead lizards and starts feasting. Being so close to the… visceral scene, I don't back away. This is just something I'm going to have to deal with. I need to show Inv that I'm not afraid.
Trying my best to ignore the gory scene I focus on stroking Inv's back. Behind all the blood I can see a light gold every time my paw moves across his back. Every time so far I've seen this gold color. It's always when I've supported Inv in some sort of way… verbally or physically.
'Maybe… its trust?' I guess to myself, I'm still not really sure what it means. The most I can derive from it is that I'm moving in the right path. If this shows that I'm making him feel better about himself then I'm gonna make him shining bright gold whenever I can!
Nodding to myself with this thought I use my free paw and put a finger on my forehead and close my eyes. Multitasking while petting Inv and looking at the screen should be fine. I'm only looking at how much time we have left in the cycle.
…
Looking at the white dots I see were about… 40% into the cycle. This is actually pretty good! We have a decent amount of time left to get to the swarm room and back to the shelter. We just can't get distracted with anything…
Opening my eyes I look towards the gory scene of Inv eating to see how much he has left to eat. To my astonishment I see he's almost done! Eating the dropwig is one thing due to how little food pips it gives but these were 2 lizards! How did he eat them so fast?!
…
Does it really matter? This will save us a decent amount of time!
After waiting a bit longer I see Inv finish the last of the remaining lizard meat. With a satisfied sigh Inv looks back up at me.
"Don!" Inv chirps at me. This would be cute if it weren't for the fact his face is absolutely covered in blood and flesh.
Feeling slightly annoyed by the hanging pieces of flesh I reach my paw towards Inv's face slowly.
"Stay still" I say to him while reaching towards a hanging piece of flesh on his face.
"H-huh??"
While confused, Inv doesn't move letting me reach for his face. Starting to flick off the hanging pieces of flesh I can see Inv's face slowly start to turn red.
"Had some food on your face, couldn't let you walk around like that, right?" I say to him half-jokingly while flicking off the remaining remnants of flesh on his face.
"Y-y-ye… tanks…" Inv mutters out while looking up at me, his face completely red.
I would like to continue the morbid teasing, but we still need food. Making sure nothing else was on his face I back away showing I'm done.
Noticing this Inv finally stands back up on his 2 legs.
"Alright Inv, we just have a bit further to go until we to the swarm room" I say to Inv as I pick up the spear I used on the lizard.
"Swar rom??" Inv questions back his head turning at a familiar 90 degrees further showing his confusion by the term.
"Yup, y'know the little black things that fly around that you can eat?" I ask Inv on what a batfly is.
"Ohhhh!! Ye, ye i ea dem somtim wen i cen cath dem!" Inv says back excitedly, his tail starting to slowly starting to move side to side behind him.
"Well, the room were going to should have a bunch of them we can eat, after stopping there we'll head back to the shelter" I lay my simple plan out to Inv.
"I se! Ok les ge tu da swar rom!" Inv shakes his head up and down in fervor.
Seeing his excitement, I can feel it somewhat rub off of me. Not due to the mention of food but due to the thought of spending more time alone with Inv in private… and I'm not as tired this time!
Finding my own motivation to get this done quickly I warn Inv on what to do next.
"Ok Inv but getting up there is going to be tricky. You're going to have to follow my exact movements alright?" I warn Inv with a serious voice.
The one thing about scaling this fucked up version of the wall is that many paths upwards originally are mostly blocked off by proto rot. Meaning we're gonna have to use a very specific path to scale this rot invested wall. It's a good thing to get to the swarm room we don't need a grapple worm or an yeek. Anything past the swarm room is not worth traversing…
"O-ok, i wil be carful" Inv responds back as serious as he can.
With his confirmation I start walking forward, getting ready to deal with the bullshit of climbing up this damn wall.
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A/N: trying to climb the wall in Inv's campaign is literally almost impossible. I spent hours trying to climb it with a grapple worm only to find out its impossible at a certain point. it's possible with a Yeek, but you would have to grab a Yeek from another region, head to the wall and do a flawless run with the Yeek. so yeah, basically impossible.
without a grapple worm or Yeek it's only possible to reach the first swarm room on the wall. anything past that isn't climbable on your own.
Sorry for the little explanation, just wanted to let out my struggles on climbing the wall in the game.