Writathon project: Duskbound Chapters 31-34 (Patreon)

Chapter 31

What had been vague intuition moments ago crystallized into sharp focus. Velik was no longer blindly guessing where his prey was and how it would approach him based on incomplete information. Now, he could clearly see the whole game laid out in front of him – move and countermove, feints and strikes.

[Apex Hunter] was the merger of his extraordinary senses, his ability to position himself in such a way as to take his victim by surprise, and most importantly, his newfound insight into how to infer the location of a predator without actually ever seeing it. With that, he had all the tools he needed to win.

The cutting strands of spider silk had been a hindrance a minute ago, something that limited his options and forced him to proceed carefully lest he stumble into one and injure himself on it. Now, he found them easily because they were right where he expected them to be. Knowing where to look instead of sweeping the whole grove with his eyes and hoping to find something made the whole process far more efficient.

They also laid a trail for him to follow back to the monster’s current hiding spot. It could shoot them out, but one end of every strand had connected to the spider itself, at least momentarily. Together, they painted a map of the roads it took across the grove, which branches it favored to support its weight and which angles it liked to move at.

The champion was forty feet away, halfway up a tree to his left, and still as a statue. Almost its entire body was hidden in the foliage, but tracing the spider silk had revealed a clear trail, and that single sliver of green-black body was all he needed to confirm its location. The question then became how best to approach it, and that was a question he was sure he had an answer for.

Knowing where the lines of spider silk were helped, but they were still in his way. Some of them had been placed deliberately as obstacles between him and the spider’s current position. Throwing the spear this early in the fight was a disastrous idea. Unlike the last champion he’d fought, this one didn’t have a scratch on it. Besides, he wasn’t trying to fight his way through a bone-charring aura of fire, and he was pretty sure a single good blow would end things, anyway.

Casually approaching it was also out of the question. The spider was greased lightning on eight legs, so fast that his eyes could barely trace the blur of its movements. There was no way it would just sit there while he walked over to it, but maybe he could force it in a specific direction. The trail of spider silk it had left gave Velik the impression that it wasn’t immune to its own webs, and it had been careful not to cross the lines too closely when it made more.

His new skill provided the answer. He’d tried it before, but the spider had bested him last time. It was faster than him and had a custom arena to stalk its victims through. He couldn’t chase it down, but he could force it to come after him simply by trying to leave the grove.

It would have to stop him, and to do that, it would need to get ahead of him. Unless it wanted to circle outside its designated arena, which Velik wasn’t sure a champion could actually even do, it would need to either take to the very top of the trees, or it would have to pass down a corridor it had made of its own silk. If he moved fast enough, he could take even that choice away.

There was one final trump card to play, a move that he was almost sure the champion couldn’t know about. If Velik was right, it would eliminate the spider’s biggest advantage over him, forcing the monster into an open confrontation that it would certainly lose. His only fear was that it would instead choose to flee, turning their battle into a game of tag where he failed to match its speed and had to worry about getting sliced up by spider silk lines.

His plan was made; all that remained was to execute it and see how many times he’d wrongly predicted his foe’s responses.

Velik started walking backward, angling off to his right as he went to cut between two trees and jump into the next row. There were still silk lines there to be wary of, but not so many that he couldn’t thread his way through them. His spear haft shortened while the blade lengthened until it looked something like a machete with a handle that was five times longer than it needed. [Shape Shifting] had its limits, and the weapon still needed to have a profile consistent with a spear.

As soon as he slashed through the first line, the spider figured out what he was doing. It disappeared from its perch in a blur that he immediately lost track of, and he didn’t bother to try finding it again. The only thing that mattered was whether it would approach from above or below. If he didn’t hear the tree tops rustling, he’d know for sure.

Abandoning all pretense at caution, Velik spun on his heels and dashed forward. He dipped under a line that was the same height as his nose and sliced apart another one two feet later that would have bit into his knee, his focus now on [Apex Hunter] to tell him whether he’d correctly guessed his prey’s reaction.

No rustle. That means it’s coming right by me. Just need to time this right.

Velik did something he normally never would have done while fighting for his life. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the mana compass. Its arrow pointed almost directly at him, just slightly to the right, which he took to mean the spider monster itself was there. With each passing moment, the champion got closer and the arrow shifted a few degrees. As soon as it pointed straight to the right, it would be passing him by.

Got you.

The arrow hit the right angle and Velik spun in place, lashing out with his spear even as [Shape Shifting] worked to increase its reach. In the blink of an eye, it tripled in length and the blade bit into something with a hard crunch. The impact almost jerked the weapon out of his grasp, forcing him to drop the compass and grab hold with his other weapon.

A blur of black and green flailing limbs tore past him, leaving a wildly spurting trail of dark ichor as it rolled end over end. A leg went sailing off between the trees when the spider struck one of its own silk lines, but despite the damage, the monster quickly reoriented itself. They stood on the ground, twenty feet from each other, one bleeding from the stump of a missing leg and a split open carapace, and the other from a wide gash down his back.

The spider wasn’t stupid. It saw the mana compass between Velik’s feet, and he was pretty sure it realized exactly what it meant. With that, its hit and run tactics wouldn’t be nearly as effective. If it moved from its current position, he’d be free to walk out of the grove. That meant the monster’s only choices were to stand and fight or to let its prey escape.

For all his newfound insight, Velik couldn’t read what it was thinking. That half circle of dead, black eyes stared at him steadily, perhaps assessing its chances, perhaps seething with silent, single-minded hatred. Whether it thought it could win or it just couldn’t fathom letting prey escape without a fight, a single twitch of its mouth between those sharp, wickedly curved fangs was all the warning it gave Velik.

The loss of a leg did nothing to slow its rush, and even on open ground, it was still so fast that Velik saw nothing but a blur of dark color. Acting on instinct he couldn’t fully rationalize, he whipped his spear out, slashing to his left while stepping to his right. It was tough to say whether he or the spider was more surprised, but the blade of his spear clipped another of its legs and sent it into a tumbling spin as it rushed past him.

There was no time to follow up on the attack before it rushed back out of range. Velik lunged after it, his spear leading the way, but he couldn’t keep up with its speed, even when it was wounded. Quit running and end this already!

Unsurprisingly, the champion elite didn’t oblige him. It disappeared deeper into the grove, leaving Velik to retreat back to his position to reclaim his compass. The problem was that when he got back there, it was gone. Did I kick it during that last exchange?

He scanned the ground nearby, hoping to find it a few feet away, but there was no sign of it. Oh. Shit. Don’t tell me…

Looking up, he saw the compass a hundred feet away from him, almost exactly in the center of the grove. The spider had snatched it up when it blew past him somehow, probably to try to eliminate his advantage. Or trying to use it as bait. That thing took weeks of non-stop work to save up for. I need it. Damn spider is too smart for its own good. It turned the tables on me.

Now he was the one being forced into a position of vulnerability, or he could abandon the compass and run, but the spider knew he wouldn’t. “Come on, then,” he muttered grimly as he reshaped his spear. “Let’s see how much those injuries slow you down.”

Chapter 32

Velik didn’t rush straight for the compass. That would just be walking directly into the spider’s trap, and he didn’t see any good reason to make things easy for the monster. It was already moving to cut off his escape routes, but he knew as soon as he approached the middle of the grove, it would hit him from behind.

[Apex Hunter] urged patience. The spider was wounded, perhaps fatally so. It was only a matter of time before it succumbed to the injuries he’d already dealt it. All he had to do was to protect himself until the spider pumped out the last bit of ichor through its leg stump.

That was all well and good, but letting it work uninterrupted while it sealed him inside a cocoon of lethal webbing didn’t strike Velik as a good idea. He needed to be proactive, and that meant pitting his perceptiveness and reaction time against the spider’s stealth and speed.

He approached the compass slowly, spear at the ready and his mind already calculating the angle he was most likely to be attacked from. It would come from a blind spot, which meant behind or above him. The webs were thickest off to the left, so he expected it to attack from the right, probably with the intent of either driving him into the spider silk or to give him some sort of debilitating injury as it rushed past him.

This whole fight would have been a lot easier if I still had that haste potion. Shame they’re so expensive, but I guess they’re worth it.

Velik brushed that errant thought away and took another step in. His eyes scoured the branches overhead, looking for that small, many-limbed body. He didn’t find it, but he did see patches of black ichor that helped him create a trail. It was enough to make a reasonable guess as to exactly how far the monster had circled around him.

He reached the compass and had just an instant to see the arrow spinning crazily. It doubled back! he thought. Without even stopping to consider, he snapped his spear straight up, unleashing the stored-up energy in [Kinetic Charge] at the same time.

There was a satisfying crunch, then something wet and heavy splattered onto his hair. Velik whipped the spear to the side, sending the body pinioned on the top sliding off to smack into a nearby tree. The spider, somehow, amazingly, still wasn’t dead.

But it was reeling. It got back upright, its movements jerky and unsteady, more black ichor dripping out of a fresh hole. Velik didn’t wait for it to make the next move, not when he saw a chance to end the battle. Before it could recover, he was on it, slashing and stabbing with his spear.

Despite it all, the monster was a champion elite, and it was far more durable than its appearance indicated. The two danced around each other for several seconds, it trying to leap at him while shedding dozens of feet of razor-sharp silken web lines that whipped wildly between the trees. He kept it back with his spear, the superior reach giving him some measure of battlefield control even as the open area shrunk around them.

Then the spider got through. It took a long, shallow gash across its back in the process of ducking under his spear, but an instant later, its fangs sang into the side of his leg. Velik’s leather boots were no match for the champion’s bite, and searing pain radiated out from the bites. Poisoned.

The spear spun in Velik’s hands like it was a living thing and the butt end of it slammed down directly on the crown of the spider’s head. It collapsed to the ground, only to twitch and try to rise again. A second strike put a crack in its outer shell, and a third snapped a chunk off.

[You have slain Ultgith the Shadow (champion elite, level 33.]

[You have taken a champion seed from its former owner, Chalin.]

[Champion seed’s current reserves: 0/140.]

Chalin again. I knew it. What were you doing out here?

With the immediate threat finally ended, the pain from his back injury came surging forward in full. Combined with the bite he’d suffered right at the end—Velik was almost certain the spider had realized it was going to die and had deliberately taken the blows just to guarantee it could inject a massive dose of venom into his leg—and he wasn’t sure he was going to be hobbling back out of the grove even with a healing potion.

He drank one anyway, then groaned as partial relief swept through him. The burn in his leg didn’t abate, but his back started to stitch itself together. While it worked its way through him, he limped over to reclaim his compass. It wasn’t until he picked it up that he realized the truth. “Son of a…” he muttered.

It was cracked down the center and the arrow flopped around uselessly. I just got this thing! It was so expensive!

The worst part of it was he wasn’t even sure if it was him or the spider that had actually broken it. It had been working when they’d started the last exchange, but one of them had hit it hard enough to snap something inside the delicate device. Considering he barely knew how to use it in the first place, Velik doubted he had a chance of repairing it.

Which means I’m stuck. Again. I need to replenish my potion supply. This champion fight proved that. Buying another compass on top of that means a month of hard work unless I can get this repaired. I doubt any of the locals can do it… Those two hunters probably don’t have the expertise either, but maybe Torwin can point me towards someone who can, or would be willing to buy it off me despite it being broken. Even a few thousand decarmas for it would be better than nothing.

While he waited for the healing potion to finish its work and the burning sting of the poison the champion had pumped into his leg to run its course, he went over his gains from the fight. The champion seed had the exact same format as the first one he’d obtained, only substituting Ultgith the Shadow where the other listed Balzarith the Living Inferno, and Velik had just as little idea what to do with this one.

Of far more interest to him was [Apex Hunter]. When one skill got folded into another, it didn’t always carry its full potential over with it. [Stealth] had imparted a strong understanding of how to balance his weight to move silently, where to put his feet to avoid brushing up against things, a sort of advanced proprioception of his whole body in relation to the world around him, and an understanding of sight lines, both in and out of the dark.

[Apex Hunter] had some of that, but the proprioception tilted more towards combat now, and he was far, far more aware of not just what his prey could potentially see, but where they were likely to look. In exchange for the skill slot he’d freed up by folding [Stealth] into [Predator’s Visage], he’d lost a lot of the parts that concerned actually moving silently. It wasn’t all gone, but it wasn’t as strong as it had been before.

Velik wasn’t concerned about that. His old skill had included [Ambush Tactics] as part of its makeup, which overlapped with what he needed [Stealth] for anyway. Besides, his physical stat was so high that even someone like Torwin had a hard time keeping track of him at night.

As for his newly opened skill slot, Velik returned once again to his old weak points: range and area damage. [The Black Fang] as a class didn’t seem to want to do range, and none of the class skills provided a good solution. There were general skills, of course, things like [Bow Mastery] or [Throwing Mastery], but as a rule, Velik only took general skills when he had a plan to merge them into a class skill he already had. Weapon mastery skills for gear he didn’t have or use did not make the cut.

Area damage was also something of a dead end, with the closest he could find being active skills that greatly increased his speed for brief windows. Those actually appealed to Velik quite a bit. Having what was essentially a free, reusable haste potion, even if the effect wasn’t nearly as potent, could make future fights against opponents like the champion spider much easier.

The problem was that if he locked that skill slot down with something like that, he wouldn’t be able to gain new skills until he reached level 40, not unless he found a way to merge two of his existing skills together. It bore more consideration, but he had plenty of time to think about it while he traveled.

His leg, meanwhile, wasn’t getting any better. I shouldn’t be surprised. It was a venomous spider bite from a champion elite. Even with my high physical, that’s going to be a challenge. I could… probably afford some sort of antivenom from the system store, but if it’s just a matter of riding out the pain, I’d rather save the money.

He decided to give it another hour. If things didn’t start feeling better by then, he’d have to spend another thousand or more decarmas on a powerful antivenom. For the moment, all he could do was grit his teeth against the pain, pocket the broken compass, and start limping his way south toward home.

Chapter 33

The next morning after their late-night visitor, Jensen and Torwin left the dungeon. Whatever the broken orb was, Torwin seemed excited about it, and it was one more thing than Jensen had expected to find. It was beyond obvious that the dungeon was dead the moment they’d laid eyes on it, but he was just the lowly apprentice, so he’d kept his mouth shut and his eyes open.

“So, he really walked all the way out here to ask how to use a mana compass?” Jensen asked as they walked.

“It’s an honest enough mistake. That boy is entirely self-taught, from what I can tell. No instructors, no professors, no trainers. The spear isn’t my weapon of choice, but I’ve never seen a fighting style like his. I think he just went out into the woods when he was a child, picked up a stick, and started beating on monsters. It’s a miracle he’s even still alive.”

“Guess that unique class he’s supposed to have was good for something,” Jensen pointed out. He wasn’t bitter or anything, but it was frustrating to think what he could have done with something like that, instead of a common [Tracker] class.

“I think there’s more to it than just the class,” Torwin said. It was clear from the look on his face that he was a million miles away, lost in thought, but he still slipped through the undergrowth with an easy familiarity that Jensen couldn’t hope to match. More than once, his master had started to drift ahead despite his seemingly casual pace, and Jensen had been forced to call him back.

“Like what?”

But Torwin just shook his head. It had something to do with that cracked orb, but Jensen didn’t know what. Torwin refused to talk about it, too. He just kept saying he needed to take it back to the guild to have it properly appraised, thus the return back to the frontier towns. They’d already discussed the plan once they got there. Jensen would be sent out to run patrols near towns for levels and skill training, and Torwin would run back to Cravel, a trip he assured Jensen he could do in three days if he ran the whole way.

Which is insane. How many points does the old man have in physical to move that fast? It’s got to be over a hundred. Having [Ranger] as a class probably helps him with long-distance travel speed, but that can’t be all there is to it. I wonder if he’s got a skill for it, too.

Most hunter-type classes favored speed and endurance in their physical stats, and [Ranger] was a rare one. Jensen had no doubt the class could do everything his own [Tracker] was capable of and plenty more besides. But to cover what had to be better than four hundred miles in three days was ridiculous. Or was it three hundred? How many days were we with that caravan before we peeled off?

“Jensen! Pay attention, boy,” Torwin hissed at him.

“Huh?”

He blinked and looked over at his master, who was glaring at him impatiently. What did I miss?

A moment later, he realized he could hear something moving through the trees a few hundred feet ahead of them. The brush was too thick to get a good look at it, but they’d trained exhaustively with relying on other senses to pick up details they couldn’t gain with their eyes.

It’s big. Heavy. Four legs? Or maybe more. Can’t tell unless it starts running. Something crunched, probably a branch, but so loud that Jensen expected it was the width of a sapling. He held perfectly still and listened, not just to whatever was in front of them, but for any sign that it had friends.

Two minutes later, the creatures had meandered out of their way and Jensen relaxed. “What do you think it was?” he asked his master.

“You tell me.”

“Well, you didn’t set me to hunt it, so it wasn’t a monster. It was pretty big, judging by how much noise it made. Maybe a bear?”

“You don’t sound certain,” Torwin remarked.

“Let me go get a look at the tracks it left and I’ll give you a better answer.”

The old [Ranger] snorted. “Alright, fair enough. Come along then.”

Jensen’s guess proved to be correct, though he was impressed at the sheer size of the paw prints. Each was the size of a dinner plate, and some quick approximations told him that the bear was probably better than twelve feet tall on two legs. He glanced at the trail it had ambled off down, now littered with broken twigs where its bulk hadn’t quite fit through.

“You’re sure that was an animal?” he asked.

“I am,” Torwin said. “Didn’t have the right smell for a monster.”

How the hell did you smell it from so far away? Jensen mentally boggled at the old man’s nose.

“It’s the mana,” Torwin went on, seeing Jensen’s expression. “You’ll eventually need a way to detect mana once you get to the higher levels, especially if you want to hunt monsters.”

“Why waste a skill slot on it, though? Why not just get a mana compass like that other guy?”

“They’re not cheap, for one thing. For another, they can be lost or break. Besides, using one during a fight isn’t a great idea, and sometimes you need to be able to sense your prey’s mana.”

Jensen was skeptical of that first point. He opened his system store menu and almost immediately found a compass for ten thousand decarmas. That’s not bad, he thought as he bought one. It popped into existence in front of him, startling Torwin and earning him an incredulous glance.

“Why?” the old man said simply.

Jensen shrugged. “Wanted to see how they worked. I don’t have room for a mana sense in my skill slots right now, but if they’re that important, I should probably get familiar with them, right?”

“I… suppose,” Torwin said, sounding almost reluctant.

Come on, you stingy bastard. Give me some credit for showing initiative, if nothing else.

Praise remained as effusive as always, but Jensen was used to it. After a few minutes of silence while he attuned the compass to himself, he asked, “How does this thing work?”

  *

Torwin couldn’t quite suppress a twinge of jealousy as he watched his apprentice fiddle around with a mana compass he’d apparently bought on a whim. He didn’t even seem particularly interested in it, like it represented an idle curiosity to pass an hour’s time before being promptly forgotten.

He had to admit, though, Jensen seemed to have a better intuitive understanding of the device than Torwin had expected. After a brief explanation, no longer than the one he’d given to the Black Fang, his apprentice had already figured out a few things Torwin himself hadn’t known.

“So, this must control the radius the compass detects out to,” Jensen muttered as he adjusted the compass’s controls again. The rune it was set to use shifted in shape, though Torwin couldn’t tell what the different squiggles meant. It meant something to Jensen, and that was good enough.

“Right, and so that’s a lower range, probably good for using as a monster ambush detector if you only care about things within a hundred feet. If I take this back out the opposite way… Thought so.”

Once again, Torwin was struck by how wrong [Ranger] as a class seemed for the boy. [Explorer] would fit him so much better, or perhaps even something esoteric like [Artificer]. His family would never allow either of those, of course. Those were peasant classes, and Jensen’s father demanded he evolve his current class into something that was at least rare-grade.

Perhaps there’s something for him that could combine all those interests together. I think I’ll do a bit of research while I’m at the guild. If I can present his family with a clear alternative path toward an acceptably respectable class, he might be able to convince his father to let him pursue it.

“How do you know what the runes mean?” Torwin asked.

“Hmm? Oh, I’ve seen them before on other devices back home. There’s a whole armory full of stuff like this I used to get into when I was a kid.”

“So, you’ve had a lot of time to experiment, then? You never had any tutors or anything?”

“No,” Jensen said. He glanced up from the compass he was playing with and asked, “Why?”

“I’m just impressed at your knowledge on the subject,” Torwin told him honestly. “If I’d known you were so proficient, I’d have asked you to explain the compass to our local friend. You would have given him a better lesson than I did.”

“He’ll figure it out. It’s not that hard,” Jensen said, apparently not realizing that Torwin himself had never ‘figured it out’ in thirty years with the Hunters Guild.

Well, it was never a question that he was smart enough. It’s just his lack of ambition and his allergy to getting up with the sun that are the problems.

The pair walked in silence, Jensen too absorbed in figuring out the compass’s many functions to properly pay attention to the world around him. Torwin wanted to chastise him, but, just this once, he bit his tongue. He was witnessing something unexpected, and he didn’t want to interrupt Jensen.

The monsters, of course, weren’t so courteous. Five minutes later, a pack of worgs picked up their scent and Torwin was forced to shift his apprentice’s attention to his next lesson.

Chapter 34

Velik grimaced at the number the system store gave him, but it had been hours since he’d been bitten and it wasn’t getting better. If anything, his leg felt a little bit worse. No matter how many times he told himself he’d give it just one more hour, nothing changed. He had no choice but to flush his stash of decarmas on the antivenom now.

He’d spent the last few hours looking at class skills with an eye for something offensive that would merge into [Spear Warden] while he waited for his body to purge the poison, and even though he hadn’t succeeded at restoring his good health, he had found two potential skills to choose from.

The first was called [Phalanx], and it wasn’t really meant to be an offensive skill. It formed phantasmal spears to help defend against attacks from multiple angles, primarily by deflecting attacks and driving off enemies looking to close into melee. It relied mostly on his mental stat to control the phantasmal spears, but the exact number he could create at a time was tied to mystic. In the past, he would have avoided it simply because his whole build was optimized to stack physical and use skills that were primarily powered by it.

Now, with his new hobby of hunting champion elites, he was starting to feel the need to expand his repertoire. Unfortunately, the skills he needed didn’t synergize so well with his current stat balance, so he suspected he’d be allocating free points elsewhere for the foreseeable future. He was holding off on making a decision primarily because while [Phalanx] seemed like something that he could modify to give him more offense, the other option he’d found scaled with physical instead.

[Savage Rhythm] was a strange skill, suboptimal in that it took more time to ramp up to a point where it was viable than most of his fights lasted. It allowed him to slowly speed up his attacks, with each successive attack building off the previous. The other problem was that he had to continuously attack without relenting in order to maintain the skill. Against a single, powerful opponent, it was the better option, but he had concerns about finding a viable way to even train the skill up.

His initial instinct was to lean into his strengths and add [Savage Rhythm] to his skill list. That strategy had worked well for him so far, and he was confident that he’d be able to merge the skill into [Spear Warden] within a few levels if he could find suitable targets to practice it on. With the mana compass broken, however, he wouldn’t be getting any good use out of it in the near future.

[Savage Rhythm] is better for what I’m trying to do right now, but [Phalanx] will be stronger in the end, especially if I can shift it more toward offense. It’ll also benefit more from [Spear Warden] up front, and probably be easier to fold into another skill. Okay, I think I’ve made up my mind here.

He added [Phalanx] as his newest skill, then navigated to the system store and spent two thousand decarmas on an all-purpose antivenom, leaving him with almost nothing left over. While he waited for the antivenom to do its work, he activated [Phalanx].

It was a strange sensation, a floating, ghostly spear that he controlled with his mind. It felt clumsy, nothing like he was used to, but he was able to send it spinning out into a stuttering spin for a moment before it broke apart into wisps of light. With a bit of practice, he was able to set it to doing basic defensive weaves and jabs, nothing complex, but enough to hold an enemy off his flank.

Then he added a second spear, and a third. That was as far as he could stretch his piddling mystic stat, and for the time being, it was more than enough. Controlling one phantasmal spear while he fought was challenging. Making effective use of two was beyond his limits, and even keeping three active at once taxed him too much to actually do anything with them.

But it’s good to see how the skill will grow with practice. Maybe when I’m back home, I can try using it to kill some weaker monsters.

He had the supplies to stick to the deep wood for a few more days, but with the mana compass broken, he didn’t see much point. His only lead was out of his reach for the time being, and rather than forage for food all the way back, he decided to just leave early. If it wasn’t possible to fix the compass, he’d come out with a month’s worth of preserved rations and go on a murder spree until he could buy a new one. Maybe I’ll get a level or two out of it. I know I’m close to 31, just… not quite there, yet.

The sun rose before Velik left the grove, but with his new skills, he was confident he could still handle the higher-level monsters in the forest. It was a good test, either way, and it only took ten minutes to run into the first one.

With an eager grin, he summoned a phantasmal spear and got to work.

  *

[You have advanced to level 4. +1 Mental, +1 free point.]

Sildra let out a great sigh of relief as the last of the blade mantises died. Despite only being six inches long, their scythe-like arms were more than capable of leaving long slices or even cutting off fingers. Even though she didn’t have to get up close to the monstrous bugs like Gorm, it was still scary fighting a set of sharp blades attached to wings.

“I got the level up,” she called to her bodyguard. “We should head back to town before the moon goes down.”

Her first skill of her new class was called [Lunar Flare], and it allowed her to harness moonlight and turn it against her enemies. The skill said it wasn’t actually fire, but it sure looked like it to her, albeit the same soft white as the moon. Regardless of how the magic worked, the monsters she hit with it were left with charred, ashy-pale flesh.

She quickly dropped her free point into mystic, as she’d done every level. Exhaustion from using the skill was her primary weakness right now, with her limit being far too low for her liking. Half a dozen uses was all she could contribute to a single fight, and then only if she got at least an hour to recover between fights. The monsters weren’t always so cooperative though, so Gorm had come along, too.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Gorm said. His eyes scoured the battlefield, and with a deft hand, he quickly harvested a trio of mushrooms with pale blue frills under their caps. “I bet I can get at least fifty hesplates for these.”

A few weeks ago, that would have seemed like a lot. Now, she was in possession of no less than fifteen decarmas from all the late-night training sessions. It was a pittance when she looked at the price tags attached to the system shop, but in terms of everyday purchases using copper hesplates or silver vitrunes, it was a small fortune. She could even afford a handful of golden fulmites, had there been a single one in any of the frontier towns.

It almost made up for risking her life every single night.

“Hey, so, there was something I needed to talk to you about,” Gorm said about half an hour later as they neared the wall surrounding Deshir. “I, uh… my contract with your mom is up. Technically, it was up a few hours ago.”

“It is?” Sildra hadn’t realized it had been six weeks already. She supposed she’d technically accomplished her goal, but it had been nice having the higher-level bodyguard with her while she trained and gained levels of her own.

“Yeah. I just wanted to make sure you got that last level before I left town, you know?”

“Oh. Would you consider extending the contract? I’ve got some money now.”

Gorm sighed and shook his head. “Sorry, can’t. I’ve got to be out of here in the morning to get to my next job. I already accepted the contract before I left Cravel and it’s going to be hard enough getting back in time as it is.”

“I see,” she said softly. “Then, thank you. I couldn’t have become a [Druid] without your help.”

“It was my pleasure,” he told her. “I’ve never seen anyone get a new class from a god before. Story to tell my grandkids someday. I wish I could stay longer and see you grow, but…”

“But you have obligations to meet, and you wouldn’t be a man of honor if you abandoned them,” she finished for him. “I understand.”

“Right,” he said lamely. “So, yeah, I’m heading out as soon as we get back. Hopefully I find someone with a wagon or a cart going the right way who doesn’t mind me catching a ride while I sleep today.”

The two approached the gates, which were manned by a pair of night watchmen. Both had high enough mental to see in the dark, or perhaps some sort of skill. Either way, they recognized the duo and nodded to each other. “Good hunting, Sildra?” one of them asked.

“Level 4,” she said with a smile.

The other chuckled. “You’ll be a right little powerhouse in no time at that rate. Here, let me get the gate open for you.”

Once they were inside, Gorm walked with Sildra until she reached her parents’ shop. “This is goodbye,” he said. “Do me a favor. If you ever see that Black Fang fellow again, tell him I said thanks for saving my life.”

“I will,” she promised. “And thank you for everything, Gorm. I hope I see you again someday.”