Writathon project: Duskbound Chapters 20-22 (Patreon)

Chapter 20

From the day Velik left to the day he returned, three weeks passed by. He didn’t go out of his way to kill monsters on his return trip, but there was still plenty of bloodshed to slow him down, not to mention he needed to practice his new skill. Since he’d acquired it primarily to deal with enemies that had physical stats too high for normal attacks to hurt them, that meant fighting the monsters in the deep wood.

His practice paid off in the form of a rank advancement for [Kinetic Charge] on the third day of his return trip, and his decarma stash continued to grow until he recouped the potion expenses for the trip. Considering that it would have taken him months near the towns to gain that much of the system-generated currency, he couldn’t argue with the gains, especially when he considered the skill ranks and breakthrough to level 30.

And then there was the [Champion Seed]. He had no idea how to use that, or even if he should. Planting it somewhere and growing a new monster was the opposite of what he spent his time doing, which made the item seem wholly useless. Even selling it sounded like a bad idea, since that probably meant somebody else growing the monster instead.

Maybe some sort of research center might be able to do something with it, he thought to himself as he stared at the line in his status’s inventory screen. The actual seed was in his hip pouch, but he could see the system text on his gear and supplies without having to handle them. Unfortunately, no new information had revealed itself in the last few days. Even its reserve counter still read 0.

The closer Velik got to home, the more concerned he grew. The monsters should have been getting weaker, on average level 12 or 13, with the biggest, most powerful ones barely reaching 20. That did not seem to be the case anymore, however. By the time he made it back to the den he’d hollowed out and furnished for himself, the forest was still thick with monsters above level 15. It made very little difference to him, personally, but it was a huge jump in strength that he doubted the town watch could manage so easily.

Most hunters and guards in the frontier towns around here never made it past level 20. That was the goal, just high enough to unlock the third skill slot, then stay home and hope trouble never came their way. It became harder and harder to level as they outleveled the local monster population, so the ones that didn’t give up ended up leaving. As a self-regulating system, that made people like Velik the anomalies, and to be fair, most of his latest levels could be attributed to the rising average monster level over the past six months. A trip to the deep wood accounted for the rest.

Ignoring that for the moment, why are there so damn many of them? I thought the towns brought in that guild-certified hunter with the idiot apprentice who could barely shoot straight. Did he up and leave the second I went north or something?

Now that he was back home, Velik’s first priority was to replenish his food supply. Much as he wanted to sleep—it was already three hours past dawn and he’d pushed to cover the last fifteen miles—he hadn’t stopped to forage yesterday and his last hunting trip had been interrupted. It was either go find something to eat or head to the closest town and buy food.

That idea actually held some appeal, if only because it would allow Velik to stock up a few weeks of supplies in one trip instead of spending days butchering and preserving venison. Celarut was the closest town after Beldrit, and Velik wasn’t in so much of a hurry that he was eager to go back there again, not after last time. It would only add an extra half hour to his trip going a few more miles, so he set off immediately.

  *

Fifteen miles and about a hundred slain monsters later, Velik walked into Celarut. It was the second largest of the four frontier towns, and whoever had originally staked it out had been enamored with the idea of wide streets. Two full-sized wagons could easily pass by each other unimpeded, and they often did as timber was brought to the local saw mill. Right now, the town was mostly empty. It would fill up in the evening as its citizens returned from the forest or came into the inn for a meal, a drink, and some company.

But empty was just the way Velik liked it, and he really only had one stop in mind. It was a large building on the main street, two stories and with a full warehouse attached to it. The owner was also the mayor, unless something had changed recently, and he stored the town’s lumber on-site while they waited for the next caravan to show up to take it off their hands in exchange for luxury or otherwise-unavailable goods from down south.

There were only two people in the store when he walked in. One was the mayor himself, a short, thin man with an enormous mustache and his thinning, graying hair parted down the middle. The other was a strapping younger man, probably one of the saw mill’s workers judging by all the sawdust on his clothes. They were deep in conversation, with the mayor looking cross and tapping his foot the whole time.

“—telling you, I don’t care if they need to hire a few extra guards. Just get it done. We need the saw mill running round the clock or we’re going to come up short on this month’s shipment,” the mayor was saying as Velik walked in.

“But, sir, there aren’t any guards to hire! We’d have to take them off the wall, and the captain won’t sign off on it,” the worker said.

“Who does he think he reports to, anyway?” the mayor snapped. “You tell him I said to— Oh, hello there.”

The tonal shift when the mayor noticed Velik was almost jarring. His expression immediately cleared up to a placid, pleasant smile as if he hadn’t been reaming out a guy who, as far as Velik could tell, hadn’t done anything to deserve it beyond having the unfortunate luck of being the bearer of bad news. Not your problem, he reminded himself. You just need some supplies.

“The Black Fang himself,” the mayor said. “Haven’t seen you in months. Say, now there’s an idea. You like killing monsters, don’t you? How’d you like to get paid to do it?”

“Not interested,” Velik said immediately. He hefted his sack and held it out for the mayor. “I need you to fill that with two weeks’ worth of dry provisions.”

“I’m afraid my assistant is out today, and I’m handling other business,” the mayor said. “I can certainly fill your order, but I’ll need an hour or so. If it’s a meal you want, though, why not head over to the Raven’s Nest and have a nice late breakfast. I’m sure everything will be ready by the time you come back.”

Velik might have ignored the advice if his stomach hadn’t chosen that exact moment to express how unhappy it was with not having been given anything to eat for the better part of a day and a half. Perhaps it was the thought of a hot meal cooked by somebody who actually had ranks in a relevant skill that did it for him, but whatever the reason, the mayor’s idea suddenly sounded like an excellent one.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Take your time,” the mayor said breezily. “I’ve got to get this business sorted out before I can work on your provisions anyway.”

Kind of suspicious how quickly he gave up on recruiting me, now that I think about it. Well, I guess you don’t get to be the mayor by being stupid. It was worth floating the idea since it didn’t cost him anything, but not worth hounding me over.

The mayor and his hapless worker watched Velik leave, then started back up again the second the door closed behind him. He stood there for a moment, then took a breath and shook his head. Don’t be paranoid about it. It’s not like the whole town could do anything to you. Just go enjoy a hot meal. Morgus knows you’ve earned it. Now, which one of these buildings is the inn?

  *

Jaryll waited five minutes after the Black Fang left before he abruptly cut his employee off mid-sentence. “I don’t care about that right now.”

“You… what?” the idiot kid said. “But, I thought—”

“That monster hunter we hired made it known that he was looking for the Black Fang. Go get a message to him that the boy is here in town, and do it fast while we still know where he is. Got it?”

“How am I supposed to do that? They could be anywhere!”

“You’ve got a whole logging crew plus guards out there, don’t you? Figure it out!” the mayor snapped. “Now quit wasting time and go.”

The kid, in perhaps the first intelligent move he’d made since walking through the door, scampered off into the street and started jogging toward the edge of town. Why do all the smart ones level up and leave? Jaryll mentally lamented. I swear these new hires get dumber every year. Oh well, if he can get the message to where it needs to go, maybe that monster hunter can finally do his damn job and end this infestation. Then it’s back to business as normal, with profits as normal, too!

Chapter 21

Velik’s cooking was edible, and that was as charitable as he could be describing his culinary skills. Having a meal at the Raven’s Nest was making him revise that opinion. Who knew there was more to it than just adding fire to meat? He shoveled another spoonful of some sort of meat stew into his mouth.

The fact that he didn’t hear footsteps until they were approaching the table told him who was walking up to him. He wanted to blame it on being absorbed in his meal, but the truth was that the hired hunter was just as strong as him and probably a hell of a lot more experienced. There was no telling how many skills he’s mashed together.

The chair across from him slid out and the old hunter dropped into it. “You know, you could have made it a lot easier to catch up with you. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“What made you think I was interested in answering them?”

The hunter chuckled. “Seems like we’re in the same business. Wouldn’t hurt to cooperate with each other. I’m Torwin.”

Velik looked up from his stew to see an outstretched hand. “Not interested.”

Torwin waited a moment, then sighed and pulled his hand back. “Look, I’m not asking you to work with me. I’ve already got an apprentice to look after. I just wanted to ask a few questions and according to everyone, you’re the guy who knows about the wilderness beyond the frontier.”

“What’s there to know? Monsters show up, I kill them. You don’t need me to explain that.”

That sleazy mayor is behind this. I should have insisted he fill the order so I could get out of town as quickly as possible.

“I was actually hoping to get you to tell me more about the night you found your class orb.” Torwin was probing at him with some sort of skill while he talked, but Velik’s mental was too high for it to break through. He frowned at the older hunter, who immediately stopped whatever it was and at least had the decency to look ashamed. “Sorry.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Velik said. “I answer this question. You leave me alone from now on.”

“Deal,” Torwin said instantly.

He took another bite of his stew while he thought it over, one of the especially delicious bites that had a little cube of meat in it. I wonder if I could learn to make this. Maybe the cook would give me the recipe and I could buy the ingredients.

“There’s not much to the story. A friend and I decided to go explore the old dungeon in the forest. Back then, there were basically no monsters in the area. Some high levels came through thirty or forty years ago—I’m not sure exactly when—and broke the core. I think we had some vague idea that we’d discover some secret treasure everyone else had missed.”

Torwin smiled. “I think we all had dreams like that when we were children. I remember thinking that I’d find some legendary weapon and become a mithril-ranked hunter, a max level dragon slayer.”

“Something like that,” Velik agreed. “And we did find something.”

“The class orb.”

“Yes. It gave me [The Black Fang].”

“I’ve never heard of that class,” Torwin smiled. “Quite a surprise. It’s been twenty years since I saw a hunter class I didn’t know everything about already. I hope you’ll forgive me for prying. I’d love to get information on it to add to the guild archives.”

“It won’t do you any good,” Velik said.

“Why?”

“It’s unique.”

Torwin’s eyebrows rose. “You found a class orb that granted you a unique class when you were seven years old. That’s… far-fetched.”

“I don’t care if you believe me, guild hunter,” Velik said. He took another bite, savoring it as he chewed. “They serve good food here, don’t they?”

“Good beer, too. So, you found a class orb, got a unique class. I haven’t heard you mention what happened to your friend.”

“I don’t know. The process knocked me out. When I woke up, my friend was gone and there was a monster crawling toward me. I assumed the monster got him first and ran for my life.”

“Could you have revived the dungeon core?”

Velik shook his head. “We never even saw it. The stories say they’re huge things, big stone pillars you can’t even wrap your arms around. The only thing we found was the class orb, and that was barely the size of a hand ball.”

“I can’t imagine it was a coincidence that monsters started pouring out of the trees the same night you went exploring.”

“Yeah, that’s what the mayor said when I got back, that it was all my fault somehow, and that I was a monster myself.”

“Why would they say that?” Torwin asked, his brow furrowed. “I’m sure whatever happened was an accident.”

“Ah, because of my race. It changed when I got my class.”

“It did what now?”

“It’s not a secret. Did nobody mention it when you were asking about me?”

“They did not,” Torwin said. “So, it wasn’t just a class orb, then. But I’ve never heard of something that can change a race. Perhaps it was some kind of cursed item. That might also explain why it was left behind by the original team. Though…”

“Though what?”

“They still should have taken it for disposal. I guess it’s possible they just missed it.”

“Maybe,” Velik agreed. He didn’t really care why the class orb hadn’t been found before, just that it had changed him, and that using it had done something to start the monster population in the area. Or it was a massive coincidence.

“I was thinking about going to look at the dungeon,” Torwin said. “You know, to make sure it’s still dead. It’s possible that the team that cleared it out made a mistake and sent it into hibernation instead of actually killing it. I know a second team already checked it, but I’d like to see it for myself.”

Velik’s spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. He tilted it a bit and got the last little chunk of carrot out of there, then said, “I’m not going to try to stop you. If you want to waste your time, that’s your business. Do me a favor and kill any monsters you see on the way there.”

“I was hoping to get you to come with me.”

“Not interested.”

“Don’t you want to see what’s there?” the hunter pressed. “There could be clues about what happened to you and why the monsters appeared.”

“I’ve already been there, three times now. There’s nothing to find.” Velik pushed his chair back and stood up. “Did you want something else before I go?”

“I just want to do what I was hired to do: kill the monsters and stop more from showing up. I’m not your enemy. I’m not working against you.” Torwin stood up and offered his hand to Velik again. “If you change your mind about working with us, we’ve got rooms at this inn. Come find me.”

The old hunter started to walk away, then paused. Without turning back, he said, “And… I’m sorry for what you went through. You didn’t deserve to be treated that way. If I’d been there…”

He trailed off with a sigh, then walked out of the inn and left Velik alone with his thoughts.

That could have gone a lot worse. The way he was chasing after me a few weeks ago, I didn’t think he’d take ‘no’ for an answer.

Velik left a pair of silver vitrunes on the table—probably more than the meal cost but the money was worthless to him now that it had served its purpose as a training aid to boost [Stealth] up another rank—and followed Torwin out of the inn. The hunter was already gone, thankfully.

Now to go have a word with the guy who told him I was here. He’d better have my order ready.

  *

Torwin found Jensen easily enough. His apprentice’s grasp at woodcraft was best described as rudimentary, or maybe it was more accurate to say that Jensen knew how to walk without leaving a trail, but didn’t care to expend the effort. Either way, he wasn’t hard to track down.

“Well?” Jensen asked when Torwin stepped out from behind a tree and joined him on the trail.

“No good. He answered a few questions, but he’s not cooperative and he didn’t tell me anything new, beyond confirming that he’d already gone back to look at the old dungeon a few times. Our plans haven’t changed.”

“Why didn’t you make him cooperate? It’s not like he could stop you from grabbing him by the neck and dragging him out here.”

“First, because I like to think I’m not a shitty person. Second, because that’s a good way to grow a knife between your ribs while you’re sleeping. Third, because I think he just needs time to realize we all want the same thing, then he’ll willingly assist us.”

“We could offer to pay him,” Jensen said. “I mean, that’s why we’re here. Everyone likes money.”

“We’re here to get you valuable experience fighting an enemy that’s within your capabilities to handle, and also to solve a monster problem on the frontier. The money doesn’t really factor into it.”

Jensen paused and turned to regard his master fully. “Wait, really? You’re not out here for the money?”

“All hundred gold fulmites of it?” Torwin responded dryly. “No, it wasn’t a hugely motivating factor in my decision.”

“A hundred? That’s it?” Jensen sputtered. “That’s barely pocket change. It was three hundred miles just to get here.”

“You have an incredibly skewed grasp on how much money that is, especially to people as poor as the ones living here. Maybe we need to have a discussion about how much things cost, and how much people earn when they don’t have a noble household to see to their every whim.”

“Can’t we just go kill some monsters instead?”

Torwin flashed his apprentice an evil grin. “Not to worry! We can do both.”

Chapter 22

Eager as he was to get back to the deep wood, Velik was not comfortable leaving the area with so many monsters around. The towns had their walls, and they had the watch to guard against monsters. That was fine for a pack of worgs or a few blur hawks, but it didn’t work quite so well when thirty or forty monsters formed a horde and tried to overrun the place.

That was a big reason Velik was so concerned about elites showing up. Different monster types didn’t work well together naturally. Sometimes even the same monster types would fight each other for territory or a meal. It was one of the big ways the population was kept in check, but it did result in the monsters being a higher-than-average level even if the total number didn’t tend to go up.

If an elite got involved, the story changed. For some reason, they could direct other monsters in cooperative attacks. If it was something like an elite worg, it might unite four or five packs under its leadership, which could easily wipe out an unprepared human settlement. More diverse hordes tended to be smaller, but that didn’t necessarily make them less dangerous. A flock of night screamers could disorient defenders long enough for bigger monsters to kill them, even if they lacked the numbers of a homogenous swarm.

As many elites as he’d seen in the last month, he didn’t doubt there were half a dozen of them running around, and since he hadn’t been here to kill them before they started building up their own hordes, and Torwin hadn’t done as good a job keeping the population under control as he’d hoped, that meant there was a chance a horde or two were forming right now.

So, instead of heading directly out again when he woke up late in the afternoon, Velik did a full circuit of his normal route, killing whatever random monsters he came across and searching for signs of gathering hordes. There was plenty of evidence that more than a few elites had been working on exactly that, but the hordes had apparently already been destroyed or dispersed.

I guess those two were good for something after all. He is a professional monster hunter, so it makes sense that he’d know where to focus his efforts. This is a lot of clean up, but not an impending disaster.

It was better than he was expecting, but not as good as he’d been hoping. Velik looped past each town, his speed increasing drastically once the sun went down. By the time he completed the circuit, a full hundred miles of woodland travel and at least three hundred now-dead monsters along the way, the sun was nearly up.

The whole time, he kept coming back to that conversation with Torwin. For one thing, it had been the longest conversation he’d had with another person in years, and it set off an unexpected pang of loneliness in him. Velik found himself drawn back to that encounter with his old childhood friend, Sildra. He’d never expected to see her again, but there she’d been, out in the woods in the middle of the night trying to gather some stupid flowers and risking her life.

Idly, he wondered what she’d even needed them for. As far as he was aware, they had no medicinal properties, and he doubted anyone would be stupid enough to fight off monsters just for a pretty bouquet. From what he remembered, Sildra’s family did leatherworking with a focus on lumberjack supplies. They mostly took orders for boots, gloves, harnesses, tool belts, and jackets. Flowers were not a part of the process, especially not rare ones that only bloomed at night during specific phases of the moon.

Come to think of it, those should be popping up again in a day or two. I wonder if she’ll try to go after them. Hopefully she hires someone a bit stronger this time.

They weren’t terribly hard to find, but there were none close to Deshir. It was going to be a ten or twelve mile hike one way, and the monsters were even stronger now than they’d been before. Then again, they’d gotten unlucky last time with that elite. Maybe it would be fine.

Though he did his best to cull the monster population, he couldn’t be everywhere and protect everyone all at once. Hopefully, Sildra wouldn’t do anything rash, or if she did, she’d get lucky and return home unscathed.

I suppose I could delay returning to the deep wood by a day or two and clear out the forest around Deshir. It needs to be done anyway. Really, it’s just shuffling priorities around a bit.

Velik wasn’t sure who he was fooling, but it sure wasn’t himself.

  *

The [Moonsilk Blossoms] appeared right on schedule, leaving Velik to wonder if and when he could expect his foolish childhood friend to show up to claim them. He patrolled the area around Deshir heavily and found no less than three elites coming out of the deep wood. None of them were above level 30, and thus, were no match for his high physical, the [Sharp] enchantment on his spear, and his new [Kinetic Charge] skill.

He spotted Sildra about two hours before the sun went down, followed by the same bodyguard as last time. I knew it. You were always too stubborn for your own good. The pair disappeared into the forest, heading for a wildflower field while Velik quietly stalked them.

“Shouldn’t we go to the south field first?” Gorm asked.

“No. There weren’t enough last time and I basically picked the place clean. There will be even less now.”

“Are you sure you need that many though? I thought you got more than enough.”

“I didn’t decide how much we need. I’m just following instructions,” she told him.

“Whose instructions?” he shot back, suspicion obvious in his tone.

Good question.

“It doesn’t matter. All the old flowers are useless, so I’m starting from scratch. We have to gather all of them before the full moon starts to wane.”

That’s… oddly specific, Velik thought with a frown. What is she up to?

Whatever it was, the best way to make sure she didn’t get killed was to help her get it done. Neither her nor Gorm were anywhere near strong enough to find him, but they were quite noisy. Velik kept himself busy killing off anything that got too close, usually before it even realized he was there.

Gorm might not have been able to spot Velik directly, but he recognized a fresh kill when he saw one. The third time they stopped to prod a monster corpse, Sildra just smiled out into the trees. Velik would have thought she’d somehow spotted him, so close was her gaze to where he was crouched on a low branch, except that she was peering ten feet to his right.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Huh?” Gorm said, looking up from the monster corpse.

“Nothing. We should hurry.”

“You’re the boss,” he said. He stood back up, craned his neck looking around for the fifth time in the last ten minutes, then shrugged and started walking.

  *

“This was a lot easier this time around,” Sildra said brightly.

“Yeah. Too easy. I keep waiting for the monsters to fall on us.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Because of the Black Fang? I heard someone spotted him in Celarut earlier this week. He was talking to that guild hunter they hired.”

“Oh, I’ve met him. He’s a nice man, very polite.”

“The guild hunter or the Black Fang?”

“The guild hunter,” she said. “The Black Fang is… kind, I think, but perhaps not nice and definitely not polite.”

Well you’re pretty rude too, Velik thought from his position four hundred feet away. He had a giant ferret pinned to the ground with his spear. It kicked and thrashed weakly while its black blood dribbled into the dirt and he waited for the kill notification to come in.

“I think maybe you shouldn’t speak ill of him,” Gorm whispered harshly. “Who knows how close he is? What? We both know it’s not a coincidence that I haven’t seen a single living monster all night.”

“Morgus has sent him to our aid,” Sildra said.

“I don’t know about that,” Gorm shot back sourly. “And even if it’s true, maybe don’t be so casual about it. Now come on, if you’re done here, let’s get back to town.”

“No, there’s one more stop to make first.”

“What? More flowers?”

“Not this time. We’re going to Crescent Hill.”

“That’s thirty miles from here!”

“And we need to get there before the moon sets,” she said.

Maybe four hours. They’ll have to move a lot faster than they’ve been going so far.

“Does it have to be tonight?” Gorm asked.

Sildra bit her lip and glanced up at the moon. “It… No. It doesn’t have to, but I want it to be. The [Moonsilk Blossoms] should be as fresh as possible.”

The bodyguard grunted and peered out into the darkness. “Gods save me from foolish teenage girls. Alright, there’s no time to waste. Here, hand me that pack and I’ll get it tied down. We’re going to have to run the whole way.”

Velik didn’t think they’d manage it, but he’d do his best to clear the way just to see what would happen if they did. He had his suspicions, and it’d be worth the time wasted just to witness things for himself if he was right. And either way, he wasn’t about to let Sildra get herself killed running around in the dark.

Smiling to himself, he slipped off to hunt the next monster down.