Writathon Project: Duskbound Chapters 1-8 (Patreon)

As a spur of the moment decision, I decided to do a writathon side project. This won't affect Keiran's release schedule at all, and my current plan is to do a single weekly update on Monday with whatever I get written. My goal is to make this a stand alone story of about 100k words, but with room for a sequel if there's enough interest in it. This will probably go live on Royal Road in the next day or two, depending on how fast I write. I would appreciate feedback, as this is basically a first draft that I'm writing at top speed with no planning. Seriously, I haven't even reread the chapters for typos.

Monsters lurk in the night, but what if something else hunted them?

Velik the Black Fang has stalked the frontier for ten years, his only desire to kill any and every monster he can manage. And he is very, very good at his job. Lately, however, the monsters are growing in number and getting more bold. They’ve begun raiding human towns again, and not even the Black Fang can stop all of them by himself.

One such town calls in a professional monster hunter to help, a man named Torwin. Determined not only to stymie the sudden infestation, but to find its source and eliminate the problem, Torwin starts looking into the region’s history. What he finds are secrets the locals would rather have stayed buried, and the existence of a mysterious protector none of them want to acknowledge.

Every answer leads to more questions, and not even Velik himself knows the truth. But with Torwin’s help, he just might find out.

---------------------------------

Chapter 1

Blood dribbled down to the tip of Velik’s spear, thick, viscous, and black – monster blood. It beaded up at the edge before falling to splash on a carpet of wet autumn leaves, just another drop among the gallons already painting the forest floor. In the center of that mess was a creature of thick, knotted muscles and fur so coarse that it could peel the flesh off a classless child just by rubbing up against them. It had a mouth full of jagged teeth and black nails that scrabbled against the dirt as it tried to drag itself closer to its intended prey.

Even with its spine severed, it was still a monster. Knowing that it was going to die, it was left with only an instinctive desire for revenge. Pain was no match for that overwhelming urge. Velik watched it carefully, though he knew he was in no real danger. This particular beast was a known entity, just one of hundreds he’d slain over the past two years when they’d started appearing. He knew the reach of its lunging bite. He knew the strength of its flat, lifeless black eyes. He knew how to hide, when to run, and, most importantly, when to strike.

That was why this monster was lying on the ground, having taken a surprise spear-wound through the back while it skulked through the forest, and that was why Velik knew how to trick it into baring its throat in an attempt to reach upward and snap at his outstretched hand. The spear blade punched through fur and hide like they were a coat of mail and pinned the monster to the ground.

[You have slain a bristle fur worg (level 14).]

[You have been awarded 1 decarma.]

[You have advanced to level 28. +2 Physical, +1 Mental, +2 free points.]

Fourth one today. Why are there so many lately?

It was a thought Velik had often pondered over the last six months. At first, he’d thought it was just a slightly busier spring than normal, but as the season changed into summer, he’d changed his mind. Monsters were showing up faster and in greater numbers. Even worse, the average monster was now around level 17. Last year, they’d only been level 10.

He wouldn’t say he was worried about what he’d do when another elite showed up, necessarily, but he understood that the risk would be far greater. Those kinds of monsters weren’t meant to be killed solo, not even by someone of the same level, but it was impossible to get anyone else to cooperate with him, so he was forced to get clever every time another of the hulking brutes appeared.

Once he was sure there were no other monsters lurking in the brush, just waiting for an opportunity to rush out at him, Velik turned to his status. In the last half a year, he’d leveled five times, more than in the two years prior to that. It was yet another sign that something was wrong.

[Name: Velik]

[Race: Human (Duskbound)]

[Class: The Black Fang]

[Level: 28]

[Physical: 87(+8)]

[Mental: 51(+2)]

[Mystical: 22]

[Free Points: 2]

[Decarma: 26]

[Skills:]

[Predator’s Visage (Rank 7)]

[Spear Warden (Rank 4)]

[Stealth (Rank 6)]

[Gear:]

[Blood Seeker(+5Ph)]

[Hunter’s Cowl(+2Me)]

[Stalker’s Boots(+3Ph)]

With hardly a thought, he put both free points into physical. Over the years, he’d experimented with expanding his mystical stat, but the simple truth of it was that he rarely encountered monsters with magical abilities, and his own skills relied almost entirely on his physical stat instead. [Predator’s Visage] had a magical component to it that greatly enhanced his senses, but it was hardly even necessary after all these years. Even his gear barely required a hint of magic from him to be used to its full potential.

Worgs never traveled alone, not unless Velik had already killed all but the last one. Since that wasn’t the case here, he got to work following the monster’s trail. The rest of its pack would be close by, probably less than a thousand feet. He’d need to be careful not to let himself get surrounded. Moving swiftly and silently, he followed the rough trail his prey had blazed through the underbrush, hoping it would lead him to his next target.

Instead, he came across a curious sight. Two men were out in the forest, both armed with bows. One was older, with thin, gray hair on his head and a thick gray beard on his face. A beak of a nose overshadowed his mustache, and his ears and cheeks were the ruddy red of a man who lived his life outdoors. He had leather armor on with matching bracers and boots, and a quiver of arrows hung off his left hip.

His companion was a study in contrast. Only a few years older than Velik himself, the man had a handsome face with a strong jaw. He was tall and lean, clean-shaven with fine blond hair styled with some sort of product. Velik gave them a wolfish grin as he considered the scent the young one of the pair probably gave off up close. No doubt the stink alone had warned any nearby monsters of his presence.

The two were still a hundred yards off, barely visible through the brush, but Velik kept clear of them anyway. The younger one might be a fumbling idiot, but the older one was a different matter. He pushed past branches and danced through entangling roots without so much as a stumble, all while keeping a sharp eye around him.

If not for [Stealth] and his own years of experience hiding from monsters in this forest, Velik suspected he might have been spotted, a feat very few could claim, and none of them still alive. Whoever this hunter was, he was good.

“Six of them,” the older hunter hissed to his companion. “They’re looking for something. See how their heads keep swinging back and forth. We let ‘em get much closer, they’ll spot us, assuming they haven’t already smelled that mess in your hair.”

Velik’s nose crinkled in amusement. I knew it.

Before the younger man could open his mouth to defend himself, the older one raised a hand to cut him off. “Just circle ahead of them. That blue-sap fir ought to be good. Soon as they come into position, you start shooting. Kill as many as you can. Prioritize the ones trying to run for cover. Remember, the job isn’t complete until they’re all dead.”

The old man had the right mindset, and if he did let any of the worgs go free, Velik would hunt them down himself. Hopefully, the apprentice was equally competent and would save him some work. Judging by the clumsy way the man moved, not at all like the older one, Velik doubted it.

Regardless of how gracefully he did it, the apprentice got himself into position. He produced a bow that Velik was certain was magical, even from so far away. A moment later, an arrow seemingly made entirely of some silvery metal appeared on the string, confirming his suspicions. Smoothly, the apprentice drew the bow back and shot the closest worg right between the eyes.

That’s a hard target. Slope of the skull means the arrow’s probably going to skip off instead of penetrating, unless that bow is real magical.

Even as Velik thought that, the first arrow slammed home, puncturing the worg’s brain as it blasted through the relatively thin fur on its face and significantly thicker bone just behind it. The apprentice didn’t hesitate to see if his shot was successful, however. He already had two more arrows in the air before the first finished its flight, both against targets on the fringe of the pack’s formation.

One worg died immediately, but the other took the shot on its shoulder. The pack scattered, smart enough to get behind cover and fan out. That was where their tactical expertise ended, however, and the old hunter immediately ambushed them with a volley of impressively rapid and precise shots that struck exposed flanks and necks.

Between the two of them, only one worg got out of the killing field. It was wounded, though, and the trail of black blood it left behind as it limped away was easy to follow. Velik ghosted after the duo as they chased their quarry through the forest, if only to make sure they got it in the end. Once it was dead, he was satisfied with their work.

“Well done, Jensen,” the old hunter congratulated his apprentice. They spent a few minutes discussing the take down and the apprentice’s work, as well as what was worth harvesting off a worg’s corpse—nothing—before finishing up with, “Let’s get back to town before it gets too late to see. Trust me, navigating unfamiliar woods at night is challenge enough. Doing so with unknown monsters lurking nearby is a fool’s errand.”

Velik watched the pair turn toward the closest town and shook his head. He supposed it was good advice for an amateur hunter, but there were simply too many monsters roaming the woods to waste time traveling back and forth from one of the many frontier towns in the area. Nice as it was to see a few other hunters out helping to quell the increasing population, they weren’t going to make a dent at the rate they were going.

Besides, I do my best work after dark. If I took the night off, who would teach the monsters to be afraid of the shadows? They might start thinking they own the place, and we can’t have that, now can we?

Chapter 2

Velik didn’t remember much about how he’d gained the racial subtype, [Duskbound]. More specifically, he didn’t want to remember. It marked the start of his life unraveling at the seams, and that very few good things had happened to him since then. When it came down to it, there were only two important facts to consider: [Duskbound] had marked the advent of the rise in monster populations in the area, and it had given Velik a way to fight back.

He ghosted through the trees, far faster and surer now than he’d been just a few hours earlier. All sorts of monsters were bedding down for the night, almost as many as were just beginning to crawl out of their dens.

Velik began his normal nightly circuit, starting down near Alnsberth and racing through the woods until he reached Dry Perch. Years ago, he’d camped out there with his father many times, but that was before the monsters came. Now it was no longer safe, especially since colonies of silk weavers were constantly webbing up the whole area. No matter how many he killed, there was always another colony ready to set up home there next week.

Fighting them was a pain since he had to do it while clinging to the sides of the buttes that littered the area. The weavers liked to spin their webs a hundred feet off the ground to catch birds, but they weren’t averse to filling the nearby trees with their traps as well. As far as monsters went, they were incredibly territorial, but also rarely left those territories. If not for the fact that they kept breeding more of themselves and expanding to cover new territories, Velik might have ignored them completely.

Instead, he swung through a few times a week, cut down their webbing—a surefire way to draw them out of hiding—and massacred a few dozen of the spiders. They rarely got over level 10, making them easy pickings. The worst part was how time-consuming it was climbing up and down the buttes to get the ones who’d made their homes up there, but when Velik was done, there wasn’t a silk weaver left alive in Dry Perch.

There were a half-dozen similar stops on this route, each one to a gully, ravine, grove, cave, or field that a particular type of monster liked to inhabit. Whether they flew, dug, or crawled on the ground didn’t matter. Velik killed them all. At night, he was unstoppable.

It was well past midnight when he ended his run about twenty miles north of Deshir. Of all the frontier towns he worked around, that was the one he made sure to steer clear of. The folks there didn’t like him, and the feeling was mutual. They’d been the first town hit by the monsters, the ones to lay the blame on Velik and his subtype, like he’d had any choice in the matter. It wasn’t like he’d asked for it.

Regardless of his personal feelings on the town, he still hunted the monsters around it. Not everyone had been in favor of his exile, such as it was, and they deserved to be safe from the things that lurked out in the wilds just as much as the people in the next town. So he killed the monsters and restocked his supplies elsewhere when he needed to.

Having just leveled up earlier, Velik knew he’d have another month or two of nightly killing sprees before he gained another one, but he was hoping the new hunters would stick around for a bit. The old one might push [Stealth] up another rank, and Velik was hoping to merge it into [Predator’s Visage] soon so he could free up the skill slot.

A faint scream cut through the air, maybe half a mile away. Velik paused in his run and frowned. That sounded human. Young, too. Someone dumb enough to be out at night? Or someone dragged out of their home to be devoured?

Not all of the monsters were on the same level as stupid beasts. Some of them were quite clever, human-like in their cunning, and utterly malicious. It was quite possible one of them had snuck into town and evaded the night watch to steal a meal out of its bed. If that was the case, then even as fast as Velik was under the moonlight, he probably wouldn’t get there in time to save the person.

But he’d avenge them.

The dark shadows of trees flew by in a blur as Velik rushed toward the sound. Could be a wood wraith or a flesh snipper. Either could get past the watch if they were high leveled. Might even be an elite. It’s about time for another one of them to show up.

A second scream came from ahead, this one louder and distinctly feminine. It was followed immediately by the blood-curdling screech of a monster. Even hundreds of yards away, Velik could feel the magic in that noise roll over him. Monsters like these were the reason he’d invested points into mystical instead of dumping it all into physical and mental. Without those points, he’d be unable to withstand their attacks, just like whoever was about to become that monster’s meal.

Two voices. A thousand feet to go. Trees thins up ahead near the hills. Probably a night screamer that found them. Idiots wandering in the woods at night. Might be quick enough to save them if they can keep it together for another thirty seconds.

As he ran, he willed the spear curled around his arm to shift form. Like a snake, it slithered down into his hand, hardening into a solid, straight shaft that looked like wood, but was stronger than steel. Velik could, and had, stopped swords swung at him with his spear. It wasn’t ideal to have the weapon drawn while crashing through the underbrush, but he knew this area well and was confident it wouldn’t slow him down now that the trees were thinning out.

Thanks in large part to [Duskbound], and also in some small part to the [Perceptive] enchantment on his [Hunter’s Cowl], Velik could easily see through the dark and navigate while running at full speed. Keeping track of things while taking full advantage of his high physical stat was actually the primary reason he kept putting free points into mental, just to keep the world from turning into an unintelligible blur around him.

So, he wasn’t particularly surprised when he burst through the tree line and saw two people a hundred feet away. One was on the ground, wounded and bleeding. The other was standing over him with what looked like a thick branch, pointing it at the largest night screamer Velik had ever seen. The tip of the branch wavered as the woman’s hands shook, but she kept it trained on the monstrous bat as it circled around in the air.

That’s a damn elite if I ever saw one, he thought, trying to size up its wingspan while it flapped crazily around. Got to be at least thirty feet. I bet I could ride that thing and it’d stay up in the air.

He could feel the magic building up the monster’s lungs, filling its chest as it prepared to release another of its disorienting screeches. As soon as it did that, it’d swoop in and gut the woman just like it had done to her friend a minute ago. Then it’d be time to eat. Night screamers preferred their victims to still be alive while they feasted.

Velik wasn’t going to make it before that screech went off, and he didn’t try. Even for him, a hundred feet in a single second was pushing it. Instead, he watched the woman falter under the magical attack, her mystical stat clearly too low to protect her, and timed his approach to leap out of [Stealth] just as the elite monster swooped down, rending talons extended.

His spear slammed into its face, driven forward with all Velik’s strength and the [Sharp] enchantment woven into its blade. It split the bat's pig nose in two, sheared across the top of the monster’s mouth, and kept going until it pushed out the back of the monster’s skull.

For all that Velik had beaten it in strength and speed, he lost out in sheer mass. That meant that as the two came together, he was the one who was thrown backwards to land in a tangle of limbs with a thousand pounds of monster crashing down on him. Thankfully, somewhere between hitting the ground and it landing on him, he got the system kill notification.

[You have slain an elite night screamer (level 20).]

[You have been awarded 2 decarma.]

Ow.

With a groan, he heaved the thousand-pound corpse off of him and stood up. That’s not how you kill those, idiot. Should have let it kill the girl and done it right.

Despite his internal scolding, he was still smiling. Whoever these two were, they were both still alive because of him. Though the way the man was thrashing and whimpering, he either had incredibly low physical or a class that gave no actual toughness from the stat. The pain had at least helped him snap out of the disorienting effect of the night screamer’s magic, which was more than Velik could say for the woman. She was still swaying on her feet, her eyes unfocused and her makeshift club held loosely in her fingers.

Stopping only to retrieve his spear and loop it back around his arm several times, he marched up the side of the hill to the two humans there. “Hey, what are you doing out here at night?” he demanded. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“Huh?” the woman asked, her voice slurred.

“Oh, snap out of it already.” Velik grabbed her shoulder to spin her to face him, but froze. Those eyes… I think… It couldn’t be.

The woman’s eyes came back into focus. “Velik?” she gasped.

Chapter 3

Velik recoiled from the woman. “You are mistaken,” he said harshly. “Return to your homes before another monster finds you.”

“No, Velik, please!”

He turned away from her and pulled the hood of his [Hunter’s Cowl] lower. “I told you, that’s not me.”

“Of course it is. How stupid do you think I am? Please, just let me explain.”

There was nothing to explain. He’d shown up in town, seven years old, clothes in tatters, shoes long since lost, and the adults had seen [Duskbound]. They’d already weathered three assaults and were eager to blame someone. His own family had died on the second night, well before Velik had returned. There was nobody left to speak up for him, nobody except Sildra’s family. He’d thought for sure that they’d listen, even if no one else had.

Even back then, [Duskbound] had given him exceptional night vision. He could clearly remember seeing her crying face in the window when her parents had closed the door on him. What could she have done? She was a child, barely a few years older than me. It wasn’t her fault.

“There’s nothing to explain,” he said gruffly. Glancing down at the man, someone Velik didn’t recognize, he gritted his teeth in annoyance and reached into his supply pouch for one of his few healing potions. They were a thousand decarmas each at the system store, but without it, there was no way the man was going to walk back to town under his own power. With a grimace, he tossed the glass vial to Sildra. “Give him this.”

And then he was gone, employing all his considerable speed to reach the trees before his childhood friend could reopen any more old wounds. Once he was out of sight, he slowed down and took a deep breath. He hadn’t seen Sildra in a decade, hadn’t expected to ever see her again. Stop freaking out, idiot. You're fifteen miles from getting these people to safety and there’s still three hours until the sun comes up.

He stood on a thick tree branch thirty feet off the ground and watched Sildra uncork the vial to the healing potion he’d left behind. Hesitantly, she grabbed the man’s head and tilted it back while she poured a trickle of liquid down his throat. The man coughed and jerked upright, grabbing at Sildra’s wrist while she flinched back and spilled half the potion all over the ground.

“Oh, no!” she yelped. “Hold still!”

“Come on, those things are expensive,” Velik muttered. He glanced around, spotted a ring-tailed giant ferret sniffing the air a few trees back. Probably smelling human blood for the first time. He’d figured out a long time ago that they had freakishly powerful senses of smell, so strong that he’d baited an entire infestation of them in three years ago, wiping out two hundred of the nasty little beasts in one night.

He jumped between trees, nothing but a whisper in the night, until the ferret was right below him. Six feet long. That’s almost a record. His spear slithered down into his hand, tip poised, and he dropped out of the tree onto the monster, pinning it to the ground. It spasmed in pain and let out a squeal before dying.

[You have a slain ring-tailed giant ferret (level 12).]

“What was that?” the man yelled, making far more noise than necessary and probably attracting the attention of something else that Velik would now need to kill.

On the other hand, maybe I can just follow him around all night and ambush everything he draws in. That might be even more efficient than my normal route.

The man eventually managed to regain his feet. After a bit of searching around, he picked up a sword from where it was hidden in the knee-high grass, then peered around. “This has been significantly more dangerous than expected. An elite appearing like that… I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, but we should turn back before our luck runs out.”

“But I didn’t get enough [Moonsilk Blossoms],” Sildra argued. Her eyes slid over to the corpse of the giant bat, its face split open and the side of the hill stained black in the moonlight. “Maybe you’re right.”

“The Black Fang watches over us,” the man said, almost reverently, causing Velik to pause in his tracks a few hundred feet away. “But it’s best not to tempt fate.”

“You’re probably right. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a few on our way back.”

“I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way looking for them. I’m not at full strength and even the normal monsters are starting to become challenging to defeat. If we were to encounter even a small group in our condition, we’d be in trouble. We can’t rely on the Black Fang’s generosity all night.”

“Very well, but don’t mention him when we get back to Deshir,” Sildra cautioned her companion.

“Why not?”

“He’s not well loved there, Gorm.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Gorm studied her for a moment in the dark, then nodded. “Very well. If it’s a sensitive topic, we’ll leave it alone. I think I’m ready to move now.”

  *

In the morning light, the forest looked far more peaceful. The worst of the monsters had slunk back to their burrows and dens, and the half of a healing potion Gorm had gotten down had done its work. Velik was confident that Sildra’s bodyguard could keep her safe without assistance now, and he needed a few hours of sleep for himself.

He moved through the trees, not nearly as swiftly as he’d been going a few hours ago, but still far faster than anyone else in the area could have. Old, familiar trails guided him home, such as it was. Within an hour, Velik was standing on the bank of a small, clear stream, stripping down to clean himself and his clothes.

The bloodstains weren’t coming out, but that was nothing new. All of his clothes were monster-blood black now and had been for years. The only exception was his sturdy system-crafted boots, enchanted with [Mending] to keep them whole and clean. Everything else was dunked in the water and vigorously scrubbed more to get the stink out than from any real hope of returning the outfit to its original color.

After he was done, and still wearing his spear as a band that looped around his arm several times, Velik jumped into the stream himself. A quick dip was more than enough—even with his high physical stat, the water was shockingly cold. Then he scurried back to his home, a low-ceilinged hole in the ground formed when a summer squall had partially ripped up a tree a few years ago.

Velik had discovered the place, enlarged the hole underneath, and fortified it with planks of what could only generously be described as rough-hewn wood. There was no skill in their crafting, just a tremendous amount of system-granted strength and coordination keeping his cuts straight. The doorway itself needed to be lifted out of its groove and slid to one side to gain entry, no easy feat considering it weighed a quarter ton.

It wouldn’t stop a monster from ripping its way in, but it did prevent casual exploration from monster and animal both, and when he was inside trying to sleep, it would give him enough of a warning to prepare for a fight if something did scent him inside and attacked. That was all Velik could ask for, and it was a far sight more security than anyone else sleeping in the forest could claim.

Lot of people out in the woods lately, he thought while slipping inside and setting his door back into place. I suppose I’m not the only one who noticed how thick the monsters are getting. Something’s got to give soon. Hopefully winter will slow them down in a few months.

A decade of killing monsters had done nothing to slow the rising tide, but Velik was older, smarter, and stronger now. It had been three years since his last expedition into the deep forest to hunt for the source of the monsters, but he was planning another one now. He just needed the influx to die down, preferably after he reached level 30 and merged [Stealth] into [Predator’s Visage]. That would give him two open skill slots, and he was looking at a few options to give him both range and burst damage to help deal with the next elite monster he ran into.

A few thousand more decarmas wouldn’t hurt anything either. His funds were extremely low right now and they didn’t reliably appear when he killed a monster. But at the rate he was going, he expected to be ready to go hunting again soon. It was just a question of when.

This time, he was determined to find the source. It was out there, somewhere, that thing he’d accidentally unleashed as a child, the father of all monsters. It had taken everything from him, and Velik meant to return the favor.

Soon.

Chapter 4

When the first settlers had shown up and founded what was now known as Celarut, they’d immediately prioritized building the Raven’s Nest. Two stories tall and with eight rooms for travelers to rent out, it was the town’s centerpiece and probably the only reason trading caravans bothered to venture this far out into the frontier.

Celarut was a lumber town, which was fine, in Torwin’s opinion, but there were trees closer to civilization that had less monsters living in them, so he didn’t really see why this particular town even existed. But he wasn’t here as part of a caravan, no, he’d been hired to find and kill monsters, and since the Raven’s Nest had the nicest inn for a hundred miles, Celarut had become Torwin’s home base.

The seemingly limitless supply of ale had nothing to do with that decision.

Torwin made his way down to the common room about the same time the eastern sky started brightening with pre-dawn light. He wanted to push Jensen today, see if he couldn’t get the boy’s physical stat to mature a point on its own with system intervention, not that Jensen would thank him for it. No, the boy would be bitching and moaning by late afternoon and wanting to take extra breaks to offset the early start.

“Morning, Torwin,” Induar said from the wood stove behind the bar. “The usual?”

“If you’ve got it,” Torwin said.

“Three eggs, slice of ham, extra large mug of ale.”

“Thanks,” the old [Ranger] said, placing a pile of five copper hesplates on the counter in front of him. Technically, his meals were included in the price of his room, but he knew Induar was getting up early to cook for him, so he didn’t mind adding a little extra. Besides, it wasn’t like hesplates were worth much. A single decarma could be traded for five or six hundred of them, easily. It was only little frontier towns like Celarut or impoverished slums that even used them.

“Any luck finding your Black Fang yet?” Induar asked.

“Nothing, not even a footprint. I’m starting to think this is some sort of prank the whole town is pulling on me.”

“Oh no, I assure you, he’s very real,” the cook said with a laugh. “Doesn’t much like company, though, so I’m not surprised you’re having trouble finding him.”

“After two weeks, though? I’ve been up and down this whole stretch of the frontier. Fifty miles in either direction. Even stayed up in Deshir one night just so I could poke around the woods up there, and let me tell you, they’ve got nothing on your place.”

“Don’t try to butter me up, old-timer.”

“I only speak the truth. Three-day-old bread and a slab of meat I couldn’t even [Identify], it was so burnt. I’ve eaten better foraging for food after a month out in the woods.”

There were five towns in close proximity out in this corner of the world, with Celarut being somewhat centrally located. They’d pooled resources together to take out a contract with the Hunters Guild, and Torwin had seized it as an opportunity to push his apprentice’s levels and skills up. It wasn’t until they’d actually arrived in Alnsberth that he’d started to suspect the extent of the problems up here had been misrepresented.

Going out into the woods was taking his own life in his hands. A monster encounter was an absolute certainty, probably several times a day even if he went out of his way to avoid them. The monsters seemed content to pass by the towns, with only the bravest and stupidest of the farmers maintaining fields too far from the relative safety of civilization.

But there wasn’t a person in a single one of these towns who hadn’t lived through a horde. If their stories were to be believed, it was incredible any of these places were still standing. Things had been bad ten years back, and then they’d slowly started to get better over the next few years, but the monster problem had never quite gone away completely. In the last few months, it had gotten worse than ever, with three of the five towns having fended off attacks over the summer.

It's not natural. Not once in thirty years have I seen anything like this. Something’s wrong here, and not a one of these supposed frontiersmen has the first clue.

The Black Fang, on the other hand, might just have some answers. All five towns knew of him. There were plenty of rumors, though the folks up in Deshir stubbornly insisted he was the cause of all the monsters in the first place, but no one had been able to really explain who the Black Fang was or where he’d come from, or even if he was actually human. Torwin had heard a few rumors claiming he was part monster.

It was all a big, jumbled mess. He’d come here for some easy decarma and to train the apprentice the guild had foisted on him, not to untangle whatever it was that was going on out there. And yet, he was a professional, gold-ranked, and with a reputation to uphold. He couldn’t just run out on the place now that he’d agreed to take care of the monster problem.

Of course, it’d be a lot easier to do that if Jensen would get his ass out of bed. That kid’s never going to evolve his class if he keeps sleeping in every morning, Torwin thought sourly.

“You just keep at it. I’m sure you’ll find the Black Fang eventually,” Induar assured him. “Here, food’s almost ready.”

“And that’s another thing, what kind of name is that anyway? Someone told me it’s his class, but I’ve never heard of it.”

The cook shrugged. “Never met him myself and don’t know much about it. The man doesn’t spend much time in town. I don’t think he’s been in Celarut in the last few years, though I’ve a friend down in Alnsberth who said he saw the Black Fang there about six months ago.”

“Probably dead and in some monster’s belly,” Torwin grumbled. “That’d be my luck, just chasing ghosts through the woods for a month.”

It wasn’t all bad. The monster levels were too low to do Torwin any good, but Jensen was getting plenty of practice tracking and killing them. He’d already advanced [Tracking] twice this week alone and [Marksman] was close to ranking up, too. It was too bad the man was so stubborn about not wanting to take [Survivalist] when he opened up his next skill slot. That was going to delay his class evolution by months at minimum, but Jensen’s family had too much power to be ignored.

Torwin was stuck with his apprentice for the foreseeable future. At least, he was if the lazy jerk ever showed up. It’d been twenty minutes now. Breakfast had been served and eaten. The beer was gone—though Torwin was considering a second mug—and sunlight streamed in through the windows.

One more beer, then I go roll his ass out of bed so we can get started.

Raising a hand to get Induar’s attention, Torwin jiggled his empty mug and said, “One for the road?”

  *

“Morgus’s massive hairy balls, why are we awake right now?” Jensen whined.

Doing the guildmaster a favor. Getting paid well for it. Just keep the kid alive for another six months. It’s his own fault if he’s still a [Tracker] then.

Torwin wanted to reach out and smack his apprentice upside the head. Instead, he said, “Because we’re here on a job and we’re not making any progress on it, which means we’re not working hard enough.”

“I’m working plenty hard. You could have at least let me eat breakfast.”

“You could have if you’d gotten out of bed when you were supposed to.”

Torwin blocked out Jensen’s complaining and glanced around curiously. It was never truly silent out in the woods, not unless something really bad was going down. There were always bugs buzzing or chirping, birds singing, and countless rustles of small animals moving through the brush. It only got quiet when predators were nearby and everything went into hiding, and even then, it didn’t get this quiet.

“Jensen,” Torwin said, interrupting his apprentice, “shut up.”

Not totally useless, the old hunter thought to himself. Jensen wasn’t actually that bad at his class; he just lacked the dedication needed to be truly great. Once he was focused on an issue, however, he was competent. The kid was already bringing up that fancy bow his father had bought him, the one that created steel arrows out of magic.

“I don’t smell anything,” he said. Glancing back at Torwin, he added, “Downwind, you think? Or some sort of scent-masking skill?”

Cocking an eyebrow, Torwin pointed up into the sky. Jensen followed the finger and froze, the blood draining from his already pale face when he saw what was flying overhead. It was obviously using some kind of magic to keep itself aloft, there being far too much mass for those thin skin flaps to do the job on their own. It looked something like a squirrel, except thirty feet long and covered in scaly plates of dark gray. Its incisors were huge and pointed, perfect for tearing into meat, and its tail had none of a squirrel’s bushiness. Instead, bony protrusions grew out of it every foot or so.

Torwin could quite easily imagine that tail smashing through a tree just from the physical force of the strike, never mind whatever magic it had besides what was supporting its flight. This one was probably beyond Jensen’s ability to tackle.

“What level is that?” his apprentice whispered harshly.

[Dire Clubtail Flying Squirrel (elite)- level 22. Stats: 39ph, 22me, 29my. Skills: Wind Tamer, Shred, Massive Impact.]

Well, he won’t kill it, but it’s good to experience fighting monsters stronger than you. Plus it’ll keep him humble.

“If you had [Identify], you’d know. Get after it, now. We can’t leave something like that to just roam around the forest causing problems.”

“After it? Are you insane?” Jensen protested.

Putting a hard look on his apprentice, Torwin said, “This is the job. Sometimes the monsters are bigger than you. Deal with it. Now, move.”

Chapter 5

[Predator’s Visage] had a couple of different skills mixed into it, but one of the most important aspects to Velik was that it gave him a sort of intuitive sense of where to look for prey. With the skill at rank 7, it had a nice range on it, about five hundred yards. The forest was a riot of autumn colors right now, all yellows and oranges except for a few stubborn evergreens clustered together, which made it far more difficult to spot animals than it might otherwise be.

In another month, the trees would be filled with the grasping wooden claws of bare branches and the brilliant leaves would be nothing more than a forgotten carpet of detritus on the ground, but right now, Velik’s primary class skill combined with his high mental stat did the heavy lifting when it came to finding and killing new monsters.

Normally, he slept through the morning and got up sometime around noon. Perhaps it was something in [Duskbound] that he didn’t understand, or maybe it was his class. Something the system had given to him had drastically cut down on his need for sleep, and a good day for Velik was three to four hours.

That gave him plenty of extra hours to do things besides just kill monsters. Today, he busied himself with hunting game, which had become scarce as more and more monsters appeared in the area. There were plenty of them that had no problems eating a deer or turkey. Even aggressive game like boars often died when they challenged a monster that had wandered into their territory.

But Velik’s food reserves were running low and monster meat generally tasted awful, so he went hunting for less dangerous prey. Luck was with him, and it took less than an hour to find fresh signs of a herd of deer that frequented the stream near his home. There were a lot fewer tracks than there’d been last year, the herd already decimated from the monster infestation, but they’d spare one more of their number to keep Velik fed for a few more weeks.

His movements were more deliberate in the day, slower and cautious, acutely aware of the world around him and how it might perceive him. Still, he quickly spotted the herd through the trees some fifty yards off and circled around to get downwind. It wasn’t something he had to consciously think about these days, not with [Predator’s Visage] coloring his behaviors. Stalking prey was second nature to him now.

Velik didn’t own a bow, not because he couldn’t shoot one, but because his style of movement revolved around slipping through narrow openings that a bow would get caught on. He was hoping to get one that had the same [Shape Shifting] property as his spear, and possibly with the ability to make its own arrows like that one he’d seen the younger of the two hunters using yesterday. Either it wasn’t system-crafted, or it was so expensive that Velik hadn’t been able to find it in the store yet.

He was more than familiar with hunting in melee range, which was admittedly much harder to pull off, even with a rank 6 [Stealth] skill. Sneaking up on a single monster was easy compared to approaching an entire herd of skittish deer, but Velik had done it plenty of times before and he knew how to do it again today.

He was in position on a thick tree branch hanging over the trail, spear poised and ready. All he had to do now was wait, and probably not for long. A few minutes, maybe half an hour at most, was all it would take. He already had his eyes on a nice, big doe, one that didn’t have any fawns hanging around it.

Everything was going perfectly, until something crossed the sun overhead and cast its shadow over the herd. They panicked and scattered immediately, with the majority of them running off in the wrong direction and the stragglers darting between trees instead of down the trail. Not a single one of them passed under Velik’s perch, meaning he’d wasted the last two hours of his life tracking down his next week’s dinner and getting into position to take one.

Maybe a bow would be worth it, just for hunting trips. It’s not like I’d need to carry it for killing monsters. Those don’t run away.

Velik peered up through the branches to see what had scared off his dinner, only to freeze and pull on [Stealth] for all it was worth. The monster was big, one of the biggest he’d ever seen, and definitely one of the strongest. [Predator’s Visage] had long since swallowed the [Identify] skill he’d picked up years ago, and while it no longer functioned to give him hard numbers, it told him plenty.

Little bit lower level than me. Significantly lower physical, despite its size, and probably geared more toward agility and speed than raw strength. High mental for a monster; I’m betting that’s mostly perception and processing speed. And a lot of mystical. Is that all to keep it flying, or does it have some offense, too?

He studied the massive scaled squirrel as it glided by on enormous skin flaps, sizing it up for exploitable weaknesses and trying to get a feel for what its magic did. The last thing he needed was to be right in its face, about to stab its eye out, only to have it breathe out shards of ice or stone on him.

One thing he was certain about, though: it had to die.

  *

“It’s not subtle, is it?” Jensen said.

“Not much tracking involved in this one, no,” Torwin agreed. “I hope you’re thinking about what you’re going to do once you catch up.”

“I thought I might shoot it to death.”

“Think harder. It’s got four levels on you and it’s an elite. You want to be a [Ranger]. Here’s your chance to prove you’ve got what it takes.”

If you didn’t have half a million decarmas worth of system crafted gear, your skills and level would be rising a lot faster. You rely too much on the toys and not enough on your brain, Jensen.

“Tch,” his apprentice said. “Have a little faith in me. Morgus himself has my back.”

“I’m sure. That’s why he warned you about that root you tripped over yesterday, right?”

“Only because you kept prodding me to go faster! I don’t have a level 50 rare class, old man! My physical is less than half what yours is.”

That would have been a fair point, except that a classless child could have shown more grace than Jensen had. He’d stumbled entirely because he wasn’t paying attention to anything but those bracers that made magical arrows he’d gotten right before they’d left Cravel for the frontier.

“You’d better milk it all it’s worth, or we’ll be chasing that elite til’ nightfall,” he told Jensen. “Damned thing is pulling away.”

“What? No, we’re just in a rough patch of the woods. Soon as the trees thin out, we’ll catch up.”

They’re not going to, and you should know that. We’ve been through here twice this week. Unless that elite swings to the south, the woods are only going to get worse. You’re going to lose it in about twenty minutes, assuming it keeps flying at the same speed and we don’t run into something else before then.

“You’ve got ten minutes to bring it down before I go ahead and do it myself,” Torwin told him.

“What?!” Jensen yelped. His eyes narrowed and he growled, “Fine, if that’s how you want to play it…”

Magic surged through Torwin’s apprentice and his speed suddenly tripled. He tore through the underbrush, snapping branches and ripping stubborn plants out by their roots. And there it is, Torwin thought to himself. You could have circled around to the south and shadowed it in parallel. You could have scaled a tree and fired a few shots at it to get its attention. If you were better at harnessing the potential of your stats, you could have just slipped through the thicker underbrush faster. But no, all problems are solved with money.

You’ll never turn [Tracker] into [Ranger], and I’ll never hear the end of your failure. Maybe it’s time I start thinking about retirement if this is what the new generation is like.

Torwin sped up, easily pacing his gear-assisted apprentice’s speed. It was easy to follow him; he’d left a trail a blind man could walk by bodily tearing through the foliage. Trailing closely behind, he followed Jensen as the young man ran the elite monster down. They lost sight of the monster frequently, especially with the canopy getting thicker, but it was always easy to spot whenever they caught a glimpse of the sky.

Until, unexpectedly, it wasn’t. “It went to ground,” Torwin said. “Huh. Maybe it found something to eat. Either way, lucky for you, huh? Maybe you can ambush it now.”

They hurried forward the last thousand feet or so, with Torwin hanging back to let Jensen take the lead. A bitter leaf hare distracted the old [Ranger] for a second, just long enough to draw an arrow and release it, taking the beast through the throat and pinning it to a tree mid-jump, then Jensen’s strangled cry of mixed surprise and outrage pulled him back to the chase.

“Hmm?” Torwin asked, rushing to catch up. “What in the world…?”

“He’s stealing my kill!” Jensen sputtered, outraged.

“He’s magnificent,” Torwin uttered, not even realizing he’d spoken out loud until Jensen turned a bitter glare on him. Oops, that’ll bruise his pride.

Chapter 6

Velik wasn’t expecting an audience, let alone the hunter pair from yesterday, but he’d already ambushed the elite. Too late now. Best I can do is end this quickly and disappear.

A titanic flying squirrel was a new one, but nothing surprised him anymore. Practically every flavor of animal there was had a monstrous counterpart, and in the case of things like rodents and insects, they were almost always several times bigger. Weirdly, they were always the most aggressive breed of monsters, which had made them difficult for a younger Velik to deal with.

Unchecked aggression was great against inexperienced and low level hunters, but it didn’t work against Velik. He knew he was a higher level with better stats. The only thing the monster had on him was the typical insanely high amount of physical resilience all elites shared and several hundred pounds of mass.

Wind tore around the two of them, manipulated by the elite monster and threatening to steal Velik’s balance with each billowing gust of dead leaves. The opening was there, a tempting target as the monster spread its paws wide and bared its chest. All Velik had to do was leap forward and thrust his spear into the monster’s fur. But he knew he couldn’t muster up the speed to complete the strike when fighting against a headwind so strong that it ripped branches out of the trees.

So, he didn’t fight directly against it. Instead, he let it speed him on his way as the monster’s paws lashed out. Crackling lines of magic trailed behind it, tracing the path its nails cut through the gale. They were too slow to catch Velik, but only because he’d moved with the screaming wind instead of against it. Any other direction would have seen him wounded, at best.

His own spear flashed forward, scoring a hit against the monster and leaving a thin trail of black blood in the air as it swept away. The squirrel-beast screeched, more in rage than in pain, and lunged forward. Its full weight slammed down where it tried to pounce on Velik, but he was already gone. Leaping high into the air, his spear whipped around like a living thing to lead his dive. Point first, it slammed down into the monster’s back.

Unlike most of the monster’s Velik had killed lately, this one wasn’t so easy to kill. Wind tore at Velik’s arms, trying to pull him off-course, and fur hard as steel resisted the tip at impact. Without his [Duskbound] strength driving the blow, he couldn’t get a clean strike in. Rather than puncturing a foot of muscle and possibly crippling the squirrel, his attack dug a deep furrow in the monster.

Velik’s feet barely touched fur before they were sliding sideways, but his balance was perfect. He slid off the monster, swinging his spear even as he tumbled through the air to keep it at bay, then twisted to land upright and facing his opponent. It wasted no time in pursuing him, but just like before, it couldn’t catch him.

This is taking too long. If it doesn’t run out of magic soon, I’m never going to get a clean shot in.

Normally, Velik would have danced around it, harrying it with precision strikes and bleeding it out, but now he wanted this thing dead so he could get away from the hunters. Without the boost granted by [Duskbound], he wasn’t going to be able to simply overpower it, which meant taking a risk.

Before he could attack again, the younger of the two hunters decided to help. His bow came up, an arrow materialized out of nothing, and then he shot it into a wall of wind so strong that it was immediately ripped off-target. Velik jerked out of the way just in time to avoid being struck by the magical bolt, but he didn’t have time to follow up on that.

[Spear Warden] was an amalgamation of a few different skills related to controlling the battlefield, primarily [Serpent Strike], [Bleeding Thrust], [Shepherd’s Cane], and, of course, [Spear Mastery]. His style focused on executing lightning-fast attacks designed to limit a target’s movement options while he drove them into a position of vulnerability, where he then left deep, weeping wounds. Blood loss indirectly killed many of the monsters Velik hunted.

Two more arrows came in from the apprentice hunter, both predictably missing their target. The older man said something to him, but Velik was too busy to pay attention to that. The arrows hadn’t come close to hitting him this time, and that was all he cared about. He watched the squirrel move, studied the way it swayed with the breeze, and he grinned.

Got you, you ugly bastard.

It was controlling the wind ripping around them, but it wasn’t immune to its own magic. The only difference was that it could work with the wind, speeding up its movements or at least not slowing itself down, but that meant the monster itself served as a warning to help Velik compensate for the rapidly changing direction and speed.

The arc of its swinging paw told him that he could take a long step to the right, that the wind would push him the last few inches he needed to get out of the way in one smooth movement instead of two stuttered ones. When it rose up in front of him, he knew to expect another billowing cloud of leaves that filled the air and blocked his vision, and he was already shifting out of the way to slash his spear at its leg.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t still fighting against the elite monster’s magic to deliver his blows, nor was he capable of casually slicing through its thick fur. Worse, whenever he tried to get out from directly in front of it, that long tail lashed out, proving that the thick, bony knobs on its length weren’t decorative.

This would be so much easier in twelve hours. At least it’s ignoring those other two. I’m not sure I could stop something this big if it decides to go after one of them.

Of course, that was the exact moment an arrow suddenly sprouted from its eye.

  *

He figured it out, Torwin thought as he watched the kid with the spear dance around a monster five times his size. Gale winds cut through the field, throwing wood, leaves, and dust everywhere, as well as spoiling Jensen’s aim. A few of the arrows had come close to hitting the new hunter, but the boy had the presence of mind to dodge out of the way.

Unlike the spear wielder, Jensen hadn’t realized that he could read the sudden changes in wind direction by watching the monster’s movements. Until he figured that out and compensated properly, the only way he was going to land a shot was through blind luck.

“This is impossible,” his apprentice growled. “That thing’s magic is a hard counter to us. We need to retreat.”

“And abandon that boy?” Torwin asked scathingly, not that he truly thought the kid needed help. Unless he made a drastic mistake, the fight was his to win. It’d be a slog, but he’d wear the monster down with a thousand cuts and claim victory.

“I’m sure he knew the risks of venturing out here on his own. I can try to cover him if he retreats, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

“Jensen, you can’t just abandon someone in danger out in the wilderness. That’s not what a [Ranger] does.”

“What am I supposed to do then?” Jensen demanded. He raised his bow and fired another arrow, barely even making a token effort to aim as the wind swept it away. “Should I run in there and jump around like a lunatic with him?”

Sighing, Torwin lifted his own bow and pulled an arrow from his quiver. Unlike his apprentice, neither of his weapons were system-crafted. They were enchanted by a guild [Enchanter], and had cost him quite a pile of decarmas, but Jensen’s own equipment was obviously superior. Both of them knew that.

Torwin sighted down his target, read the ever-shifting wind in the elite monster’s movements, and shifted his bow slightly off to the side. Wordlessly, he let the shaft fly loose. They watched together as it twisted, blown off a straight course by a stream of wind that sped up the monster’s lunging strike, only to land directly in the squirrel-beast’s eye.

“What the fu—” Jensen sputtered.

“You could do the same,” Torwin told him.

“Sure, if I had your stats.”

“Stats are a tool. They’re worthless if you don’t learn how to use them properly. Look at that boy. Look at the way he moves. He's not faster than that monster, not with its wind controlling skill slowing him down, but it hasn’t hit him even once. Do you think that boy has my stats?”

Jensen scowled down at his bow, then grit his teeth and lifted it back up. Another arrow formed, but he didn’t get a chance to shoot it. The boy with the spear had taken advantage of the monster’s injury, stepped into its blind spot, and leaped ten feet straight up to drive his spear through the bottom of its chin.

Did the shaft just curve slightly to get around the monster’s paw?

However the boy had done it, he’d dealt a lethal blow to the squirrel-beast. The wind abruptly cut out as the monster collapsed straight down, all but burying its killer beneath its bulk.

[You have helped slay an elite dire clubtail flying squirrel (level 22).]

Jensen sucked air in through his teeth and flinched at the sound of the impact as the corpse hit the ground. “Oh, damn. That’s it for him.”

“Come on, help me lift it off him. It might not be too late for a healing potion,” Torwin shouted as he rushed forward, only to skid to a halt thirty feet from the body. The boy stood up, unharmed but missing his spear, and dusted himself off. With a glance over in their direction, he snorted and ran for the trees.

“Wait!” Torwin called out to him, but the boy had already disappeared.

Chapter 7

The hunters just would not give up. For three hours now, Velik had been listening to them clomp through the forest, chasing after him despite his best efforts to shake them loose. At one point, he’d thought he’d lost one of them, only to discover that the older, stronger one had split up from his apprentice. Torwin, if he’d heard correctly, could move through the forest without a whisper when he wasn’t leading his bumbling apprentice around.

That wasn’t enough to catch Velik, of course. He’d been hunting these woods for ten years, and Torwin had only been here for a few days. He didn’t know the lay of the land like Velik did, even if he did an admirable job of avoiding the worst of the environmental hazards. Velik was almost positive that Torwin was responsible for killing most of the monsters the pair ran across, Jensen being barely able to keep up.

An hour turned into four, and then into ten. At first, Velik was mildly amused that they thought they could run him down. Then he started to get annoyed. He’d done nothing to deserve this, was in fact busy trying to keep the towns from being completely overrun by a surging monster population. The pair should be out hunting their own monsters instead of killing whatever wandered into their path while they chased after him!

Despite the unwanted complication, he did manage to kill a few hundred monsters of his own. How are there so many? This is insane, even compared to just a few weeks ago. The bright side of things was that he was building up his decarma supply quickly. It wasn’t enough to buy a new piece of gear, but he’d be able to replace that healing potion by the end of the week at this rate.

Something caught his attention at the edge of his range, just a flicker of movement or the soft, muffled scuff of a foot kicking some dried leaves. He wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but he trusted [Predator’s Visage]. It was his oldest skill, and in all the time he’d had it, it had never lied to him. The hunters had caught up to him again while he’d been busy with a small pack of worgs.

Leave me alone! I didn’t do anything to you.

Scowling in disgust, Velik fled deeper into the woods, well outside his normal trails.

  *

“And he’s gone again,” Jensen said, throwing his hands up in the air. “How does he keep doing that?”

“He knows the forest better than us. It’s his home.”

“Some jumped-up tree chopper with a spear is not better than two members of the Hunters Guild. It’s got to be some kind of a trick.”

The two of them stood on the trail, Jensen balanced on a pair of roots sticking out of the mud and Torwin on a stretch of ground that didn’t look nearly dry enough to hold him, but his feet somehow didn’t sink. Jensen had asked him three times this week how he did that, but the bastard refused to tell him what skill it was. He just kept spouting crap like, “Your stats are your tools. You must learn to master them or they’ll become a crutch.”

It was infuriating. For months now, he’d been following this old man, supposedly a gold-ranked hunter, holder of a rare class, on the promise that he’d learn what he needed to know to evolve [Tracker] into [Ranger]. He’d have been better off staying at home with yet another of his father’s private tutors trying to teach him how to shoot a bow like he didn’t already know. At least he’d have good food and a comfortable bed to sleep in.

“It’s getting late,” Torwin finally said.

Brilliant deduction, you crackpot.

“Back to that… uh… ‘inn,’ then?” he asked, praying the answer was yes. A lumpy bed was better than no bed, and he’d learned when they’d first gotten here that this forest was a nightmare once the sun went down.

“You go,” Torwin said. “I’m not ready to let this go yet.”

Jensen shook his head. Whatever. If he dies out here, I can go home. “Good luck tracking that devil down, sir.”

“Thanks, Jensen. You… You did good keeping up today. I pushed you hard, but you never slowed down.”

“Got to get that class evolution somehow,” Jensen said. And thank Morgus this shirt is enchanted with [Endless Vitality]. Best twenty thousand decarmas I ever spent.

“Keep working at it. I’m sure you’ll get it soon. In the meantime, we’ll get you up to level 20 and get that third skill slot opened up, huh?”

“Looking forward to it,” Jensen said. That, at least, was true. “I’ll see you back at the inn.”

Torwin nodded, but he was already looking past Jensen out into the deep woods. You’re insane, old man. This place would tear anyone apart. Good luck. Try not to get yourself killed chasing after that wild kid.

  *

Jensen was a good kid, but he was too lazy to really push himself to the edge. That was why he was having so much trouble ranking up his skills. Even if that hadn’t been the case, even if his class had been legendary rarity instead of merely uncommon, it wouldn’t have changed the facts. Torwin wasn’t going at even a third the speed he could on his own, and as much as this whole mission’s purpose was to help Jensen get stronger, they did still need to complete it.

And I need to know who this boy is. He’s way too young to be the Black Fang, but who else could even be out here? Something’s off about him, either way. [Identify] came back completely blank, and there’s no way his mental stat is that high. Maybe he’s got some sort of shrouding item.

With Jensen sent back to town—hopefully without any incidents, but the young [Tracker] knew the dangers of the region now and had proven he could handle them—Torwin was free to finally stretch his legs. He didn’t know these woods as well as the spear-wielder, but he was level 51 with a rare class. This chase was as good as over.

At least, that was what he thought at first. Things started predictably enough. He picked up the trail, a feat that was surprisingly difficult, proving once again that whoever the boy was, his woodcraft was phenomenal. Torwin was willing to put money on it that there was a skill involved, probably one at a high rank.

Still, he was making progress. It was only a matter of time until he caught the guy. No matter how many streams the boy crossed over, or where he took to the trees and jumped from branch to branch, Torwin always found signs of his passage. Of course, it helped that the hunter he was chasing was still going out of his way to kill monsters. Those were much easier to locate, and they were plentiful enough to keep Torwin going the right direction.

This kid is a damn ghost, though. He can’t have had that class for more than a few years – three at most. There’s no way he’s older than twenty. The mayor said this monster density is a new thing, so there’s no way he’s been out here hunting long enough to have really packed on the levels. How is he doing this?

While he ran, Torwin thought up and discarded various ideas. Nothing seemed to fit, mostly because of the boy’s age. If he’d been older, the obvious answer would have been that he was the Black Fang himself, but that was impossible. Besides, Torwin was well-versed in the capabilities of classes that focused on wilderness survival and hunting, and he was sure half the stories the locals told about their legendary protector were the byproducts of drunken bullshittery.

Whoever and whatever the Black Fang really was, he wasn’t some kid who could barely grow enough facial hair to pretend to have a mustache. But he might be the Black Fang’s own apprentice. Morgus knows he’s a far sight better than mine if that’s the case. Maybe I could convince Mr. Fang to trade. Sure would be nice to have one that listens to direction and relies on himself instead of his dad’s money.

He was closing in on the kid. All signs pointed to that. The sun had just gone down, which Torwin expected to make things easier. He could see in the dark, but what were the chances that this kid had a similar skill? The loss of daylight would slow the spear-wielder down, and then Torwin would find him.

Three hours later, he was forced to admit that he’d severely underestimated his prey. Not only had he not caught up with the kid, but he was forced to admit that he’d lost the trail completely. Not only that, but he was running low on arrows. He only used the best, but even those broke sometimes. The unrecoverable losses were adding up, and the few that were left rattled in his quiver with every step.

“Damn kid actually beat me. That’s embarrassing,” Torwin said, but there was a smile on his face. “Maybe I am getting too old for this game after all.”

He looked through the shadows one last time, but it was clear to see. He’d lost the trail. With a final salute to the darkness, he turned around and started the run back to the Raven’s Nest.

  *

Velik grunted in satisfaction. His wide loop had circled around to the east, and right before him were clear signs that his annoyingly stubborn pursuer had finally gotten the message. Hopefully, he’d keep walking until he was back in Celarut or whatever town he was calling home.

He’d keep an eye out, just in case, but Velik was confident that he could finally get to work. Those monsters weren’t going to kill themselves, and dodging the old hunter had taken up far too much of his effort tonight. Now that that was over, he could double back to where he’d seen those fresh blur hawk droppings twenty minutes ago.

With a smile on his face, he raced through the dark.

Chapter 8

There were only three people on the streets of Beldrit when Velik reached the edge of town. He usually avoided this place, but his unwelcome guest the night before had disrupted his whole schedule. Between that and his failed hunt, he was basically out of food and in a foul mood. The only close options to resupply were Beldrit and Deshir, and there was no way he was setting foot in Deshir.

The sun had just crested the horizon half an hour ago, leaving Velik feeling weak again. He was looking forward to the errand being done as quickly as possible and getting back to his home. It would only be a few more days to level 29, and maybe a week or two to level 30 if the monsters kept arriving in greater numbers with higher levels. Maybe I’ll go straight north this time. Seems like there’s a lot of movement coming from that direction.

He slipped past one of the men on the street, a lumberjack by the look of him, though not one Velik recognized. The man sneered at him through his beard, a reaction Velik was more than used to and barely even thought about anymore. As long as the axe hanging from the jack’s hip stayed sheathed, he could sneer at whatever he wanted.

“You’re not dead, yet?” the jack almost spat out. “That’s a shame.”

Velik ignored him, having long since heard all the possible variations of this conversation. It was pointless to argue, only made things worse when he tried. A lot of people had decided he was the cause of all their problems, and that his death was the only thing that would stop the monsters from coming. For all Velik knew, they might be right.

His path didn’t take him past the other two people, thankfully. As inured as he’d grown to the treatment, he certainly didn’t enjoy it. There was a reason he didn’t go to any of the towns unless he had to anymore, though it had been years since anyone had gone so far as to actually attack him. He’d disabused them of that idea immediately and painfully.

The ones who hated his guts were bad enough, but Velik understood how to deal with them. It was the other kind, the people who revered him, that creeped him out. He wasn’t any sort of savior or hero. He just had a class well suited to hunting monsters out in the wilds, so he did. Unlike the people who thought he was some sort of fraud or con artist, he couldn’t shut down adoration just by being intimidating.

Oh, he was sure that beating someone with the shaft of his spear would work equally well, but it felt wrong to turn a weapon on them when they weren’t offering him any harm. So, he did his best to ignore them while he was here and then disappeared back into the forest as soon as possible. Occasionally, someone tried to follow him, but once he was back in the trees, they had no chance.

Although that hunter had come close. If he’d sent his apprentice off an hour or two earlier, Velik probably wouldn’t have gotten away clean. It was unsettling to see someone else moving through the woods the same way he did, at least during daylight hours, and he had an uncomfortable suspicion that he’d be seeing the man again, probably sooner than he’d like.

Beldrit’s general store was actually one of the better ones for two very simple reasons: it was near the edge of town and it opened early. If not for the fact that it was so close to Deshir, and thus constantly had people from that town there, it would have been Velik’s preferred resupply stop.

He slipped in through the front door, the little bell attached to the top ringing only because he deliberately shook the door to set it off. The owner, a portly man whose shirt strained to hold back his belly, was standing with his back to the door, a wooden crate balanced on one hip while he pulled little glass bottles out and placed them with deceptive care onto custom shelving racks designed to hold them.

“One second,” he called out without looking over his shoulder. “Almost finished up here. Annnnnd… done. There we go.”

The box, now empty, hit the floor and its bearer spun in place. He froze for an almost imperceptible moment when he saw who was standing in his shop, but then unstuck and said, “Ah, my most famous customer. I haven’t seen you in so long. What do you need today?”

“Food,” Velik told him.

“Just food? Surely, you’ve got some decarmas to spend. I just got in a whole stock of potions from an alchemy lab down south. Each one is guaranteed to be made by a level 30 or higher alchemist. I’d wager a fit young lad you could really pull the maximum benefit out of each and every one.”

“Just food,” Velik said firmly. “Stuff that’ll last a while, and a bag of salt if you’ve got it.”

His supply wasn’t completely out, but preserving meat took a lot of it and he was already here anyway. It wasn’t like salt itself would go bad if it took him more than a month or two to use it up.

“Nothing else? Rope, perhaps, or a new wineskin? Maybe a nice tunic?”

“No, thank you.”

“How about a brush for your current outfit? Something to clean the dirt and muck off it?” the shopkeeper pressed, giving Velik’s pants a significant look. Unlike his self-cleaning boots, his left pant leg was caked in mud from ducking under a frenzied lunge from a worg a few hours earlier.

“Just food,” Velik repeated again.

The routine went on for another five minutes while the shopkeeper filled a sack with dried meat, a few apples, a wedge of cheese, and a bag of nuts. “I’ve got some flatbread here. It’ll go stale, but it’ll still be edible. You want it?”

“No, this will be fine,” Velik said. “How much?”

“Two vitrunes for the lot.”

“I’ve only got decarmas.”

“Of course you do,” the shopkeeper said with a sigh. “Look, Black Fang, we go through this every time. You come in here, spend a bit of money, and then try to pay with something way too big. And you don’t want change. What am I supposed to do in this situation?”

A bag of metal coins clinked. Velik had tried just accepting them, but he found the sound annoying at best, and potentially deadly if it gave away his position at worst. Even just carrying them for the trip into town necessitated that the trip be directly to town, which he didn’t like doing. On the other hand, I have been trying to get [Stealth] to rank up. Maybe a handicap would help.

“I’ll take change this time,” he said, his mind made up.

“You will? Oh, well, alright then. Let me just step into the back and get it out of the lockbox.”

Velik materialized a single decarma, sometimes known as systilver due to its resemblance to real silver. It was impossibly clean and almost glowed in the light, two qualities that couldn’t be copied by counterfeiters. Even if they could manage it, it wouldn’t matter, since decarmas would be made to vanish or appear at will.

The shopkeeper accepted it and it disappeared to become part of a number on his status screen. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

Velik took his sack of food and glanced around the general store while he waited. Outside, Beldrit was starting to come to life. More people were on the streets, and there was even a wagon being pulled by what sounded like a pair of horses rolling on by. With any luck, Velik wouldn’t have to deal with any of those people.

The wagon came to a stop right in front of the general store. Damn. So much for that. Sometimes people, thinking him unarmed, got a little too bold for their own good. The shop didn’t have a lot of open floor space, so if it came down to a fight, the place was liable to be trashed. Please let it be someone who doesn’t hate me.

The front door opened again, this time with the bell jingling loudly, and a tall man wearing clothes that were more patches and stitches than anything else stepped in. He blinked in surprise when he spotted Velik, but did nothing more than nod his head.

“I’ll be right out,” the shopkeeper called from the back room. The creak of a lid closing followed that declaration, and he appeared in the doorway. “Ah, Fender. What can I do for you?”

“Boss needs another three kegs,” the big man said.

“Already? He’s going through my entire winter stock and the snow’s not even here yet.”

“Got some client who drinks like a fish.”

The shopkeeper snorted. “I’m going to have to raise my rates.”

“My money,” Velik said, not wanting to spend any more time in Beldrit than he had to.

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. Here you are,” the shopkeeper said. He handed close to three dozen small silver coins, each about a third the size of a decarma and lacking its mystical glow, to Velik, who pocketed them and hefted the food sack. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Have a good day, Mr. Black Fang,” Fender said.

“Er… Yes. Thank you.”

Velik walked out the door and paused to look around. Behind him, he heard Fender say, “Don’t see him too often. What’d he want?”

“Just the usual. Food that’d keep for a while and a bag of salt. Couldn’t upsell him on a single thing.”

“What? Someone was able to resist your charms? No.”

“Hey, watch it or I’ll be increasing the price on that beer.”

“Easy now,” Fender said. “I was just joking.”

A vestige of a smile crept onto Velik’s face. This was a surprisingly good trip.

“Hey! You! What the fuck do you think you’re doing here!” a voice bellowed from a block away.

The smile vanished. He glanced over and saw a familiar figure rushing toward him. I guess I spoke too soon.