Writathon project: Duskbound Chapters 40-42 (Patreon)

Chapter 40

The giant lizard’s body slammed into the ground with a hard, meaty thump. Black blood trickled out of its mouth and stained its teeth. Velik stood ten feet away, staring at it impassively as four spears made of magical energy kept the monster pinned through its death throes.

[You have slain an elite ironjaw croc (level 34).]

[You have been awarded 3 decarma.]

[You have advanced to level 32. +2 Physical, +1 Mental, +2 free points.]

[Phalanx has advanced to rank 2.]

The reptile was over twenty feet long, not including the tail, and had a mouth big enough to bite through Velik’s chest. It had lunged at him out of the stream when he was refilling his water skin, an unexpected ambush that had broken the illusion of safety he’d been carrying.

No matter how high my stats go and how many ranks I stack up, there’s always going to be something that can sneak up on me if I don’t pay attention.

The monster had pushed him up to the next level, however, and it had provided good practice for [Phalanx]. Velik had spent most of the fight dodging its snapping jaws, sometimes by literally standing on the monster when it lunged at him, and let the phantasmal spears do their work. They couldn’t penetrate the leathery flesh of the monster, not easily, but that was the point. The challenge was to find weak spots in its body and strike with pinpoint accuracy, and Velik was pleased to see that he'd risen to the occasion.

After fighting three champion elites this week, he no longer considered normal elites difficult. Even when they were higher level than him, they lacked the complications champion arenas added to the battles. Sometimes, an elite surprised him with an interesting or unique ability, but those were still easily handled.

The compass led him deeper into the wilderness than he’d ever gone, though not necessarily in a straight line. Over the past week, he’d probably run five hundred miles of forest, but he doubted he was more than three hundred away from the nearest town. For all of that, he’d gathered a wealth of power and decarmas. If the three champion seeds he’d collected were worth as much as Torwin had gotten for the first two, he could probably afford a real upgrade from the system store, maybe even something epic like his spear.

With the croc thoroughly dead, Velik hopped over the body and scanned the stream. For water so clear, it was surprising that anything could hide in it, but the monster had nestled into the bottom near the bank and covered itself in a layer of silt. It had to have some kind of skill to move that fast when it had lunged at him, but it hadn’t been enough to actually catch Velik.

Wary of a second croc coming to finish the job, he quickly finished refilling his waterskin and followed the compass deeper into the forest. Using the notes Torwin had furnished him with, he’d narrowed down the search criteria to only point towards monsters with enough mana over a certain threshold, one which he’d refined over the last few days through trial and error to point to champions.

Velik ran for another six hours, trying to find the next champion and hoping it would be the one at the end of the line. When the sky started to lighten and he still hadn’t found it, he slowed his pace and prepared to find a good spot to catch a few hours’ sleep. Against a normal monster, or even an elite, he wouldn’t hesitate to fight during the day, but for a champion, he wanted to be at peak strength.

He’d been scouting out the area, clearing it of weak monsters and looking for a defensible den when some niggling sensation filled his mind. Something is… wrong, maybe? Or not wrong, but…

He couldn’t quite place the feeling. There was nothing there, nothing he could see, hear, or smell at least, but he couldn’t shake the sense that he was wrong. Something was hiding nearby, watching him, stalking him. He needed to find them before they attacked.

[Apex Hunter has advanced to rank 2.]

Velik’s eyes widened. Normally, he’d celebrate a skill advancement, but in the moment, all it told him was that he was right to be worried. He still couldn’t find whatever it was that was lurking nearby, something dangerous and sneaky.

No, that’s not right. It doesn’t feel… Urgh. What is this? It is dangerous, but… not to me? What is this skill trying to tell me?

He didn’t know what it was that caught his attention when he walked past that tree. There was no flicker of movement, no slight creaking of wood or rustle of leaves. As far as his eyes and ears were telling him, there was nothing there. [Apex Hunter] disagreed, and before Velik was even aware of what he was doing, his spear had snapped out to its full length and he was slicing it through the branches.

Something smacked the shaft and deflected it so that the head bit deep into the bole. Velik pulled it free and danced back, just in case whatever was lurking in that tree had limbs longer than his spear.

“Easy there!” a voice called out, one Velik recognized. Torwin dropped free of the branches and pushed his way free of the tree. He was shaking one hand as if in pain and eyeing Velik’s spear up, but was otherwise unharmed.

“What are you doing here?” Velik asked coldly.

“Chasing after you, obviously. You’re devilishly tricky to hunt down, you know that? Running this way and that. I tried calibrating Jensen’s mana compass to match what you were looking for, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. Easier to follow the trail of bodies, but you move so damn quick, I started falling behind.”

“If I’d wanted your company, I would have told you so a week ago.”

The old man sighed and regarded Velik. “You understand why I’m here, don’t you?”

“Here in the frontier or here following me?”

“I’m going to assume you don’t get it, because otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to draw a distinction. I took this contract so that my apprentice could develop his skills. It’s honestly way beneath what hunters of my rank typically deal with, or at least it should be. I was expecting to hunt down a few hundred monsters at or below level 20. But then once I got here, I realized this has been an ongoing issue for years.”

Torwin jabbed a finger at Velik. “You’ve been keeping it contained, and apparently doing such a thorough job that those ungrateful assholes in Deshir never even realized it was still a problem until the population exploded. They said it happened two months ago, but I’m guessing it was a lot longer. Two months was just when it started to be more than you could take care of by yourself.”

“What’s your point?” Velik asked.

“Just killing the monsters near the border won’t accomplish anything. Give it a few weeks, maybe a month, and new monsters will be there. Maybe the level won’t be as high, but they’ll be just as numerous. And if the population explosion doesn’t stop, then next time, it’ll be a whole team of hunters up here trying to keep things under control. The real job is to find the underlying cause and fix it.”

“And you think I’ll lead you there.”

“Exactly,” Torwin said. “I’m not trying to step on your toes. I’m not trying to steal your kills. I don’t want anything from you. I just want to find out what’s causing the monster population to boom, whether that’s your friend or something else, and stop it. Right now, I think you’re heading in the right direction. If I learn something else that changes my mind, I’ll chase after that.”

While the decarmas would be nice from a whole crop of champion seeds, the truth was that Velik didn’t actually know who to sell them to. The system store didn’t buy things, and, as he’d just learned, the things it sold were grossly overpriced. Maybe the gear was worth it, but those healing potions cost ten times more than they should. That hadn’t stopped him from buying another emergency haste potion, however. Just in case.

“Where’s Jensen?” Velik could accept that Torwin could get close, but there was no way his apprentice had snuck up on him.

Torwin shook his head. “He doesn’t have the stats or the skills to survive this far into the wild lands. I left him back in town with instructions to keep the pressure off the locals. He mentioned something about a druid he’d worked with one day while I was gone, so I think he’s coordinating with someone else who came to help.”

“She’s local,” Velik said. “Morgus blessed her with a new class a few weeks back.”

Torwin’s jaw dropped open. “Morgus blessed her? I think I’d like to meet this woman.”

“I’m not going to stop you. Just don’t expect an escort back.”

“No, we have more important matters to attend to. But when our business is concluded… Yes, I’d like to meet one blessed with a new class by my god.”

Velik wasn’t eager for company, but he’d rather know where Torwin was than have [Apex Hunter] itching in the back of his mind all the time. “I was looking for a place to get a few hours of sleep. Join if you want.”

Torwin chuckled and jerked his head to the side. “Over that way. Spotted it an hour ago when I was looking for you. There’s a nice grove over that ridge, tight tree placement on one side and a solid embankment on the other.”

Maybe this won’t be so bad, Velik thought to himself. It was different, but that didn’t mean worse. Torwin started chattering about tree seeding patterns and how to use it to map unfamiliar forests while he led the way. Or maybe it will.

Chapter 41

They didn’t precisely work together, but now that Velik knew Torwin was nearby, [Apex Hunter] got a lot less twitchy about him. Neither of them slept much, but when they did, it was obvious that their schedules were incompatible. Velik worked at night to take full advantage of his racial subtype. Torwin preferred to get up just before dawn, right around the time Velik was starting to wind down.

“Does the bonus really offset the handicap of working in the dark that much?” the old hunter asked. “I’ve been pushing through the night trying to catch up to you, and I don’t mind saying that moving through unfamiliar terrain rife with monsters this strong is stressful.”

“I’m half again as strong and fast when the sun’s down and I can see in the dark already,” Velik said.

“Half?” Torwin repeated. “That’s… preposterous. No one’s racial subtype boosts them that much!”

“I didn’t make the rules. I just know how it works.”

“Morgus save me, no wonder it’s such a pain to keep up with you at night. Alright, I’ll do my best. You’ll probably pull ahead of me throughout the night and I’ll catch up when you go to ground in the morning. As long as we keep our compasses synced to the same filters, we should be able to leapfrog each other and clear out all these champions until we find wherever they’re coming from.”

That’s a good plan. I can get help removing all these problems so the compass stops pinging off them without actually having to spend time with Torwin.

As far as he was concerned, that was a win-win. Dealing with other people was awkward and difficult. The old man was friendly, but he also wanted something, and Velik couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It made it hard to trust him, like Velik was just waiting for a sudden, yet inevitable betrayal.

If not for the fact that he was worried the monsters heading for the towns would grow too powerful in his absence, he might have refused to cooperate with Torwin. It wasn’t born out of any sort of greed to keep all the champion seeds for himself, just a general mistrust for the man. Since there was a bit of a clock looming over him, however, he resolved to set aside his personal feelings.

It didn’t hurt that Torwin’s plan involved very little actual contact between them, and that Jensen was hundreds of miles away.

“I’m going to get a few hours of sleep,” Velik said. “Good luck hunting the next champion.”

“Thanks,” Torwin told him. “Are you sure you don’t want me to hang around and keep watch?”

Velik snorted, and after a second, Torwin cracked a smile. “As many thousands of days as it’s been now, I don’t think this is the time something catches me unaware in my sleep.”

  *

Torwin shook his head in admiration as he walked away. At that age, he’d been firmly entrenched in a new hunting team as a junior member. He could still remember the jolts of fear he’d get every time he heard something moving out in the dark while he was on watch, and that was with five other hunters sleeping nearby.

It was impressive and maybe a bit sad how blasé Velik was about his own survival, but then again, he was right. He’d been sleeping in monster-infested woods for years and was still breathing. His strange night-oriented schedule might help, but then again, it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of daylight monsters to be found. In truth, Torwin suspected the kid had a similar skill to his own [Ranger’s Foresight] that helped him survive alone in the wilderness.

Putting Velik out of his mind, he peered down at the compass again. There were probably two or three adjustments that could refine the search a bit better, but he wanted his compass to align perfectly with Velik’s. That way, they’d both be heading for the same target, at least as long as they stayed within a hundred miles of each other. The plan wasn’t perfect, but he figured they could manage that.

There’d been little in the way of monsters to deal with over the last few days. Velik was nothing if not thorough and the more ground Torwin had gained, the less there was to find. He suspected everything he had seen was just monsters moving into empty territories now that their former owners were dead. For the first time since he’d gone after the younger hunter, he was seeing the true scope of the deep wood’s infestation.

He shot down a pair of wolves that each had three heads, unleashing a storm of arrows on them with [Hailstrike] to empower them with concussive force. Each arrow sank through the thick pelt and released its payload, wracking the monsters’ bodies with bone-breaking waves of energy. Neither survived long enough to take so much as a single step in his direction.

[You have slain a cerberal wolf (level 35).]

[You have slain a cerberal wolf (level 38).]

[You have been awarded 3 decarmas.]

Morgus. This is insane. How are there monsters in the mid-thirties so close to civilization? Is this really all from the boy who took the dungeon seed?

On the bright side, his new bracer enchanted with [Endless Arrows] worked quite well. When he got back to town, he’d have to remember to thank Jensen for inspiring him to purchase one. It wasn’t really practical, being more expensive than five thousand real arrows, but there was something to be said for the convenience. His only complaint was that it was slowing down his firing speed with his mystical being too low to produce arrows at the same rate he could draw them from a quiver.

For the moment, he was compensating by alternating one from the quiver every other shot, but Torwin was already considering getting an enchantment added to the bracer to increase his mystic stat as well. Normally, he wouldn’t bother with a piece of gear like this, but he didn’t have time to recover arrow heads and make new shafts like he normally would, so it was a life-saver for this expedition.

If he got into a truly dangerous fight, he’d just revert back to pulling all his arrows from his quiver like normal. Until then, the magically-produced variety would suffice for hunting monsters that were fifteen or more levels below him. It was too bad that the bracer couldn’t stockpile them, being unable to make a new arrow until the first one had fired.

After three hours of hard travel, Torwin came to a field of wildflowers. It might not have seemed so out of place if summer hadn’t already started giving way to autumn, but with the weather turning cold, it was obvious there was something magical in the field. His own senses confirmed the mana was thicker, and the compass pointed right to it.

This must be the champion’s arena.

Torwin was a veteran of a dozen dungeon clears. He knew that the primary difference between a regular elite and a champion—besides just being tougher and meaner—was that they had a measure of control over the room they fought in. Traps, far-reaching magical effects, and surprise minions were all possibilities he’d have to contend with.

He stood at the edge of the field and studied it for a few minutes, trying to find some pattern in the flowers as they waved bath and forth in the gentle mid-morning breeze. What could it signify? Some sort of fairy monster, maybe? Or a swarm of insects? Bees? I suppose I can’t rule out a plant-based monster, either. Alright, stop stalling. If the kid can take out these champions by himself, and at a lower level, no less, you can do it, too!

[You have entered the domain of a champion elite: Algorex the Blood Root.]

Plant type, then.

He wasn’t three steps into the wildflowers when pollen started puffing out of them in little choking clouds. Torwin immediately dashed forward to clear them, having expected something along the outer edge of the field. Most champions had a way to lock their victims into the arena, and while Torwin wasn’t sure if it’d apply in an open field, he wasn’t surprised to see a clever solution like this.

About ten feet in, the pollen seemed to hit a glass wall, just as Torwin had expected. Not enough mana to fill the entire field, but I’d bet I can expect some targeted explosions of it on top of me if I don’t keep moving.

Up ahead, something broke through the earth. A mound of living dirt rose twenty feet straight up, with dozens of thick roots tearing free from the ground around it to flail about. Torwin didn’t slow down or even alter the angle of his dash. He just leaped straight in the air, brought his bow around, and sent the first arrow flying in. [Hailstrike] enhanced it, and when it struck, an explosion of dirt left a raw chunk of plant matter gaping in the open air.

As quickly as the damage had appeared, small, vine-like tendrils snaked across the opening and sealed it off. At the same time, hundreds of bees started filling the air, each one the size of Torwin’s thumb. With a grin, he formed a new arrow and imbued it with [Splintershot]. With [Shrapnel] bolstering the ability even further—those two were going to merge together any day now, he was sure—that single arrow killed dozens of the insectoid monsters.

Eight more arrows struck the living mound before Torwin landed and shifted attention to the swarm closing in on him. More pollen clouds puffed up from the flowers around him, but he was gone before they could reach his face. Laughing, Torwin reached for his next arrow.

Kind of fun to do it solo. I can see why Velik likes this.

Chapter 42

The first thing Velik did upon waking was check his compass. It had been pointing northwest of his camp, but now it pointed straight north. Torwin must have killed that one already.

It was good to see the plan was working, but a new problem immediately presented itself. For all he knew, Torwin could be engaged with the next champion at this very moment, but until the compass signaled a direction change, Velik wouldn’t know it. That wouldn’t be so bad if that were the case; he’d lose a few minutes of travel time, but it was far more likely that Torwin was traveling to the exact same location and would probably get there first.

Until the champion was dead, though, there wasn’t anything Velik could do to find the next one. The compass could exclude a lot, but it didn’t have a minimum range to start looking from. That coupled with the fact that he still had at least six hours to dusk meant Velik didn’t have much better to do than find more monsters to kill. Maybe [Spear Warden] would go up a rank, or [Phalanx] would merge into it. He doubted he’d get that lucky so soon after picking up the skill, but it theoretically could happen.

[Kinetic Charge] is probably going to be the next thing to jump a rank, anyway. I’m using it every fight.

He was hoping that one would merge soon, too. It had ranked up quickly in the beginning, but now he didn’t feel like the skill had much left to offer beyond the streamlined efficiency of being a higher rank. At this point, he wanted it to fold into [Spear Warden] and free up the skill slot.

Velik traveled through the afternoon and killed hundreds of monsters. Most of them were no more than a few hundred feet out of his way, but hunting them down turned a straight line into a long, wavering pattern that more than doubled his total travel distance. Since he didn’t want to fight a champion before the sun went down anyway, that served his purposes just fine.

The monster level seemed to have averaged out over the last hundred miles, which did alleviate one of Velik’s fears. He was already punching up three to six levels as it was, which was fine for a normal monster or even an elite, but he’d been worried that the champions would start climbing into the forties and that he’d have to flee from a fight that was designed to keep him there. Any monster that couldn’t leave a specific area had to have a way to keep its prey from running off.

That was less of a psychological hurdle than Velik had expected it to be. Knowing he couldn’t easily escape if he needed to was balanced out by the fact that he knew that, should he manage to run away, the champion was bound to its seed and couldn’t chase after him. Normal monsters didn’t give up unless they lost the trail, and even then, most of them would roam the area, trying to pick it back up again.

Not that he’d had to flee from regular monsters in years. The last time it had happened, he’d been twelve and the only reason he’d run was because the tip of his spear had broken off when it had gotten caught between two armored plates of a stone-back monitor lizard. He probably still could have killed it if he’d been determined enough, but not without getting hurt. He’d been in no position to waste a thousand decarmas on an overpriced system store healing potion.

He was about three hours into his journey when the compass abruptly swung around to point east. Damn. I knew this was going to happen. Well, it’s not a total waste at least. I’m up eight hundred decarma already and I’ve made progress toward another skill advancement. With a sigh, Velik backtracked a quarter mile to a game trail he’d passed going the right way and started following the compass again. He wished it would tell him how far he had to go to find the next one, if for no other reason to make sure he was closer to it than Torwin was.

  *

He was getting close; he was sure of it. The sun had just started to sink behind the trees, casting everything in an orange light bisected by long, dark shadows – twilight, his time. Already, he could feel strength flooding his limbs as [Duskbound] activated. Any minute now, he’d come across the edge of the champion’s territory, and it looked like this time, he’d beat Torwin there.

Then something strange happened, something he’d never seen before. The needle on the mana compass shifted. It was a slight adjustment, only a few degrees, but it definitely changed. At first, he cursed his luck. Torwin must have killed it and the next one is almost directly behind it.

Then the needle moved again. Velik slowed to a halt and stared at it. Over the next minute, it shifted a few more degrees toward the north, only to turn and start going the other direction. What is this? Did I pick up some sort of massively charged elite that’s not bound to a specific location?

He was by no means an expert in all things mana compass, so it was entirely possible. It hadn’t happened since he started refining his search criteria, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t. If that was the case, he just needed to hunt down the elite and kill it, the same as any other monster. Hopefully, the needle wouldn’t swing around and take him back in the direction he’d just come from.

Angry now that his first kill of the evening was going to be just another elite, Velik tracked it down with the compass. He heard nothing at first, and after a few minutes, he started to wonder if the monster was farther away than expected. Soon enough, he realized the truth. It was a stealthy predator, a hunter just like him.

About the only way this could get more aggravating is if right as I find the thing, Torwin puts an arrow in it and kills it.

The trees were starting to thin the farther east he went, to the point where a small cart could have navigated through them. For Velik, it was a leisurely stroll down an open road. He jogged forward, splitting his concentration between [Apex Hunter] to find his prey and the compass to keep him on the right track.

Where is this thing? I should be able to sense it by now, no matter how well hidden it might be.

Part of him worried that he was biting off more than he could chew, that he’d stumbled across something as high-leveled as Torwin. There’d been no indication of anything that strong in the local monsters he’d already killed, and he couldn’t see some random elite jumping up ten or more levels, but he supposed it was possible. As far as he knew, there were no system rules prohibiting it. It just didn’t happen naturally.

Maybe it wasn’t natural, though. He was out here looking for an intelligent entity, possibly Chalin, possibly something else. The champions had been placed more or less randomly, as far as Velik could tell, but that didn’t mean the same was true for an elite. Perhaps the source of monsters had sent one to this area to guard something, a powerful elite that had the advantage of being mobile.

That would mean there was something worth protecting here, which might just be a clue towards unraveling the whole mystery. With any luck, the elite would stick close to it and Velik wouldn’t be stuck spending the whole night scouring the woods for whatever it was. Maybe he’d get lucky and Torwin would catch up to him soon to help him look.

Velik immediately started planning out a way to capture the elite while it was still alive so that Torwin’s compass would continue to point to it. That would probably be the easiest way to arrange a meeting, but if it wasn’t possible, there were other ways to find him. He’d crossed the old hunter’s trail once already today; he could find it again if he had to.

Come on. Where is it? It couldn’t be that far away if the needle is shifting to follow it as it moves.

The compass was holding steady now, which either meant the monster had stopped moving, or that it was moving directly away from him. It would have had to have exceptional senses to notice him before he spotted it, and also be incredibly fast to keep ahead of him, so he doubted that was the case. More likely, it was just holding its position, maybe eating another monster for a snack.

[You have entered the domain of a champion elite: Velik the Black Fang.]

Wait, what?