Writathon project: Duskbound Chapters 43-45 (Patreon)

Chapter 43

Velik froze in place and peered around, half-expecting his doppelganger to jump out from behind a tree and run him through. When that didn’t immediately happen, he took a cautious step into the champion’s domain. Usually, the monster announced its presence right away, with the only exception he knew of being that spider that had been a speedy ambush specialist.

What if this thing mirrors my own abilities? [Apex Hunter] folded [Stealth] into itself. Maybe it’s stalking me.

That was an alarming line of reasoning, if only because he doubted that the monster would also mimic his equipment and that it wouldn’t compensate in some other way. Thus far, he’d defeated every champion he’d come up against. By that logic, he was stronger than them. If this champion mimicked his stats, then it was the most powerful creature he’d ever faced.

That was a surprisingly sobering thought to contemplate.

But this all supposes I’m right about something pretending to be me in this domain. And… can it make a system message do that? Shouldn’t it say what the monster’s really called?

He figured he’d find out soon enough. Whether the monster was his twin or not, it would attack him eventually, and probably in the next minute. He strode through the trees, spear in hand and eye flicking between the twilight shadows. There were a thousand places a human could hide in any forest, and with trees so big that their trunks were three feet wide, it was as easy as simply stepping behind one in this place.

The soft, scraping sound of dried leaves being dragged across the ground came to him, and Velik spun to face that direction. For a moment, he imagined it to be a stray breeze rustling the detritus around a thin tree, but he immediately realized his mistake.

That’s not a tree. It’s got fur on it. It’s… a leg, the size of a tree? What the…

It was the sleek, short black fur that confused him, so solid that in the evening shadows, it had taken him a moment to sort out that it wasn’t just a smooth-bored tree. His eyes followed the limb up to a massive chest, easily twenty feet off the ground and covered with a much thicker ruff. The monster padded forward a step, coming out from behind the tree far enough for Velik to see its other leg.

How the fuck is that me?!

It was a great wolf, four times his height and probably twenty times his weight. Its eyes glowed red in the shadows and its mouth hung open to reveal teeth longer than his forearm. Those teeth were like shards of obsidian darkness, gleaming in the dying light. Well, I get the Black Fang part, at least. Makes more sense than it ever did for me.

The wolf’s massive head swung around to peer at Velik and its lips peeled back. A low growl rumbled through the air, so heavy that it shook tree branches and vibrated through Velik’s chest. He didn’t need to glance down at the compass held in his left hand to confirm that the needle was pointing right at this monster.

Instead, he slipped it into his pocket, spared a moment to hope he didn’t break this one, and took up his spear in both hands. Hunter and monster—[The Black Fang] and the Black Fang—regarded each other silently. The wolf was easily the largest monster he’d ever seen, and [Apex Hunter] didn’t like his odds of victory. There was no doubt it was over level 40. The smart thing to do was to run. He was only a few feet from the edge of the champion’s domain.

The creak of splitting timber filled the air as the wolf shouldered a tree aside and crouched low. Crimson eyes stared down at him, and Velik found a strange sense of kinship in that gaze. They were two predators who could not share anything, not a territory and certainly not a name.

“Time to settle who’s really worthy of the title, don’t you think?” he asked as he took a step forward.

He blurred forward, his spear leading the way and [Kinetic Charge] primed to release a devastating opener. Halfway there, he slipped sideways just in time to avoid being crushed under a massive paw, then twisted into a jump that threw his legs out to keep him in the air above the nails that swiped sideways. His spear flicked out, a metal tongue with a razor edge, and scored a line of black blood through the thick fur.

His feet were back under him before he even started to come back down, but that wasn’t enough to save him. Quick as a flash, the wolf’s paw swung back the other way. It smacked into him like a runaway wagon and threw him through the air. Velik tumbled end over end in three complete circuits before he even hit the dirt thirty feet away.

Fucking. Ow.

[Apex Predator] screamed at him to move, and Velik didn’t stop to question that. He threw himself into a roll that ended behind a tree just in time to avoid a lunging bite from the wolf’s great maw. Its obsidian teeth smacked closed around the tree, crunching through it with no discernable effort and ripping out a mouthful. The remainder wasn’t strong enough to support the tree’s weight, leaving Velik to scramble out from under it before it toppled over and crushed him.

He jabbed his spear out, finally releasing [Kinetic Charge], and drove it into the wolf’s snout before it could recover from its missed bite. It flinched back, a somewhat incongruous movement on such a large monster, but Velik knew it was more from the surprise sting than from being injured.

They split apart, both eyeing the other warily, and with a bit more respect now that they’d begun to take each other’s measure. The wolf was every bit as strong as Velik had suspected it would be, and surprisingly agile on top of that. It was vicious and aggressive, more than willing to take a hit to dish one out.

If it got its jaws around him, that would probably be the end of the fight, which put Velik in the awkward position of needing to either end the fight in a quick, decisive blow, or giving his counterpart the slow death of a thousand cuts while fighting defensively. I’m not even sure I have a real choice. Even with [Kinetic Charge], I’m having trouble actually cutting through it. That hit to the paw was barely a scratch.

His one advantage was that this arena favored him. That ran counter to what he knew about champions, but he wasn’t going to complain about the other Black Fang having a handicap. It was too big to easily move through the trees, and he was every bit as fast as the monster, which gave him the edge in mobility.

Velik darted through the shadows, seeking to lead the wolf on a chase where it would get itself stuck, even if only for a moment. Pushing over a tree wasn’t easy, not even for something close to thirty feet tall, and if it gave him an opening, Velik was going to take it.

He led it on a chase through the trees, but the wolf was smart enough not to wedge itself where it couldn’t fit. It pursued him, all snapping jaws and savage nails raking deep gouges in the dirt as he dodged out of the way. The more they fought, the better a feel Velik got for its tactics and abilities.

I can win this. Just be patient. Don’t make mistakes.

That was what he thought until the third time he looped around one particularly huge specimen of a tree. It was easily eight feet wide, big enough that not even the champion elite could knock it over. He must have frustrated his opponent, but it suddenly shifted focus. Instead of attacking Velik, it raked its nails across the tree’s bole and left a line of burning acid scoring the bark.

It hissed and popped as it ate through the wood, and when the acid fizzled out a few seconds later, the tree had a noticeable chunk burned out of it. A few more hits like that might be enough to bring even it down.

Was that [Venom Slash]? It even has access to the same selection of class skills as me?

There were dozens of skills for [The Black Fang], and Velik assumed his counterpart had at least five skill slots. Not even looking at what it might have merged together, he could think of at least three other skills off the top of his head that he had no interest in being the target of.

A second [Venom Slash] scored the tree, prompting Velik to flee around its bulk. His spear trailed behind him, its head sharpened to a slashing edge and whipping around in a smooth arc the instant he sensed the wolf pivot to lunge at him. The wolf caught it between two teeth, jerking Velik to a halt and forcing him to either abandon the weapon or let himself get pinned.

Neither was an acceptable option, so he created a new one. [Phalanx] roared to life, four phantasmal spears appearing to surround him. They wouldn’t be strong enough to block an attack, not from this champion, but they were flashy enough that when they dove straight for the wolf’s eyes, it jerked backwards.

Unfortunately, it didn’t release the spear from its jaws. Velik tried to twist it to drag across vulnerable flesh, but the teeth clamped down on it were too tight. Giving that up, he activated the weapon’s [Shape Shifting] to thin the head down in an attempt to slip it free.

That worked, but he knew he was in trouble the moment he took his first step away. One of the wolf’s front paws was just to his left. Its teeth were feet from him; its hot breath rolled across his face. His phantasmal spears failed to penetrate even the relatively soft mass of the wolf’s eyes, and Velik recognized the distinctive muscular pop of a familiar skill activating.

Before he could so much as take a second step, the wolf used [Serpent Strike]. Its neck stretched forward, jaws open, and its teeth closed down on Velik.

Chapter 44

Velik threw himself backward in a desperate attempt to avoid being snapped up by the giant wolf, but it was a futile gesture. The power of [Serpent Strike] was in its lunging speed, and there was really only one thing he could do at this point. He tucked his arms and legs in close and led with his spear when the jaws closed around him.

The fading light cut out, not that Velik needed that to see. The wolf’s tongue pushed up against him, a massive, wet muscle that was trying to shove him between its teeth. His spear shot out, one part momentum and one part [Shape Shifting] helping keep it manageable in the tight space, and pinned the tongue down.

Despite his physical being over 100 now, he was surprised to find that it took all of his strength to keep from being forced sideways. Even as he wrestled with it, teeth opened and closed, the wolf’s jaw shifted back and forth, and hot, fetid breath assaulted his senses.

If I could get this spear free, I could kill this damn monster right now, he thought, but he knew that was wishful thinking. The second he pulled the blade back, the tongue would slam him into the teeth and he’d be torn to pieces. It was the only piece of leverage he had to hold his position, however disgusting that might be.

But his spear wasn’t his only weapon, not anymore. He had a class skill he was betting the wolf hadn’t taken. [Phalanx] blazed to life around him, four spears of magical energy coalescing to stab out at the soft palate above him or into the wolf’s gums. They weren’t made for this, and a shifting of its jaws broke them apart, but the wounds they scored remained.

Velik summoned the phantasmal spears again and again, each time stabbing them into vulnerable flesh while he struggled with the tongue. The wolf’s jaws parted, and it gave up trying to chew on him. Its head whipped back and forth in an attempt to dislodge him and send him flying.

Bit off more than you could chew, huh? Well, tough luck for you.

Getting stuck in the champion’s mouth wasn’t something he’d planned on, but now that he was past the teeth, he wasn’t leaving until he found a way to puncture its brain. [Phalanx] was slowly draining the magic out of him, but he kept hammering away at the same spot, tearing more flesh and filling the mouth with black blood.

His control was shaky, and he couldn’t maintain them for very long, but considering the circumstances and what he was trying to do, he thought he was doing a hell of a job. Even when his leg slipped and smacked into a razor-edged tooth, drawing a hot line of blood down his calf, he never lost focus.

It’s still not enough. Damn you, break already. It’s just like when I was fighting those monsters before I got [Kinetic Charge] to help me puncture their hides… Wait, could that work?

The skill was supposed to build up energy, and the phantasmal spears didn’t last long enough for that, but there was nothing saying the energy had to come from swinging the weapon around. He was burning plenty of that just holding the tongue in place so it couldn’t eject him.

He only made one spear with [Phalanx] this time. That way, he could devote the entirety of his mental to controlling it. In theory, it might be slightly stronger than normal this way, but he wasn’t sure about that. He’d tried to test it, but he’d never been able to detect an appreciable difference, despite the logic behind how the skill worked implying that it would be. Mental measured how well he could control the spear; mystic measured how much magic could be put into it. If he only made one spear, that meant more magic got focused into it. Somehow, the theory didn’t seem to match reality.

Not important right now. Focus on what you’re doing.

With his mental grip on the spear firm, he activated [Kinetic Charge]. Instead of drawing from the momentum of the unmoving construct, he used his own limbs. One forearm was braced against the top of the wolf’s mouth, while the spear was firmly gripped in his other hand and held against his chest to keep it stable. His injured leg pushed down on the tongue to keep it from wagging too much, and his other foot was locked perilously close to one of its teeth.

All of that took strength to hold, and he channeled some of that energy into the phantasmal spear he’d built with [Phalanx]. The construct shuddered in place, jerking so hard that he almost lost hold of it. For a moment, Velik was ready to start cursing, but then the whole thing stabilized.

[Kinetic Charge has advanced to rank 4.]

No time for hesitation, he thought.

The spear shot forward, many times faster than normal, and buried itself deep in the back of the wolf’s soft palate. The wolf jerked in place once, then went still. Woozily, it shook its head, but there was none of the ferocity it had displayed just moments earlier. It took a hesitant, staggering step, then a second one.

Come on. Die. Just fall over dead. This fight is over. I pierced your brain.

But that didn’t happen. With startling quickness, the wolf’s neck muscles twisted and it slammed its face into a tree. The impact jolted Velik free of where he’d wedged himself and hurled him to the ground, fresh gashes across his body and his spear left behind in the wolf’s tongue.

Velik rolled twice to absorb the momentum and came to his feet. The wolf hadn’t pursued him, hadn’t moved at all from where it was leaning its flank against a tree twice as tall as it was. The tree groaned against the weight, but held. “How the hell are you still alive?” he asked the champion monster.

In response, it stuck its tongue out to reveal his spear, then very deliberately dragged it across its teeth until the haft caught and the weapon was pulled free. Looking Velik directly in the eyes, it bit down with a crunch, then spit the two pieces of the spear out.

Son of a bitch.

[Mending] was a powerful enchantment, but Velik wasn’t sure it could fix that. Maybe if he recovered both pieces and splinted them together, it might regrow a connection. It wouldn’t matter if he didn’t win this fight. And to do that, he needed a weapon.

A new phantasmal spear materialized in the air next to him, but rather than direct it with his mind, he reached out and grabbed it. With his other hand, he pulled out a healing potion, popped the cork, and swallowed it. Immediately, his wounds started to close.

“Ready for round two?”

  *

Torwin scratched lazily as his cheek and considered what he was feeling. He’d folded [Mana Sense] into [Ranger’s Lore] a long time ago, mostly as a way to give himself a heads up when monsters used skills that relied heavily on mystic, but it served a secondary purpose that rarely came into play.

Some people built whole classes around finding stuff like this, with detection skills that had ranges measured in miles. His version went out maybe fifty feet, and was partially dependent on his line of sight. He could sense flickers of mana in his peripheral vision, but it was only when he focused on it directly that he could sort out what he was seeing.

And here, in an incredible stroke of luck, he was seeing what appeared to be an apple the color of blood made out of solid crystal. “What do you do?” he asked the fruit. “A point or two to a stat, perhaps? Or something rarer, maybe knowledge to boost a skill or ease a merger? Well, whatever it is, I’m sure someone will pay quite a bit for the privilege of eating you.”

He plucked the apple free of the tree and spent a few minutes scouring the area, just in case there was a second one. It wasn’t that he expected to find it, not as rare as these sorts of treasures were, but it would be criminally negligent not to look. As expected, the fruit was entirely unique.

Whistling a jaunty tune, he pulled the compass back out and oriented himself. Wonder how the kid’s doing. I was kind of expecting the signal to shift as soon as it got dark. Maybe whatever he’s hunting is giving him some trouble.

If it were Jensen out there, Torwin would be rushing toward the next target at top speed, but he trusted Velik to handle himself. Besides, Torwin had already killed three champions in one day, which was impressive enough by anyone’s standards. Velik could have this one. Torwin would be looking for a place to sleep in a few hours anyway, and leading up to that, he certainly wasn’t trying to pick a fight with a champion elite in the dark.

Hundred thousand decarmas in loot just today. Easy money. This might be the most profitable contract I’ve ever seen. And to think, I only took it to give Jensen a job he could handle.

The compass drew Torwin ever eastward, but he was in no hurry to chase it down to its source. No doubt, the monster would be dead long before he ever got close.

Chapter 45

The phantasmal spear in his hands lacked the reassuring weight Velik was used to. It was easy to compensate for, but it also served as a stark reminder of just how fragile his makeshift weapon actually was. The only saving grace about the whole thing was that his counterpart was nowhere near full strength.

Why it wasn’t dead was a mystery. Velik was sure he’d scrambled the monster’s brains, but somehow, it was still upright. Neither were anxious to attack, not after so many injuries. The healing potion was doing its work, but at a much slower pace than the system-provided ones. Maybe they weren’t as overpriced as he’d grown to believe, instead simply being far too powerful for the use he’d been putting them to.

While the potion slowly knitted him back together, he was happy to wait for the wolf to make the first move. It might eventually recover itself, but he doubted it would heal as fast as he was. Time was on his side – he’d be in better shape and there was a chance of Torwin showing up to help soon.

Much as it rankled him to admit it, [Apex Hunter] had been right when it warned him that this monster that wore his name was stronger than him. He was probably smarter, but that wasn’t bridging the gulf in their abilities. Worse, he suspected there were at least two more skills he hadn’t seen it use yet. Hopefully, they were both passives that contributed to the monster’s overall combat capabilities and not attacks it hadn’t felt the need to use yet.

The wolf made the first move. It still swayed on its feet, but it started a seemingly-drunken stumble that quickly morphed into a clumsy run. Getting struck by one of those flailing legs would probably break bones, so Velik quickly leaped out of the way. The trees couldn’t really stop the wolf, but they slowed it down enough that it had a hard time bringing its size and weight fully to bear.

When it did manage to close the difference, Velik slashed at its face with his spear. It struck the snout and immediately shattered, not slowing the wolf in the slightest. Mentally cursing, he called on [Phalanx] to create four more spears and flung them at the wolf’s eyes. There weren’t any good weak spots, not unless he wanted to try repeating the maneuver that had gotten him lodged in the monster’s mouth. Without his real spear to help, he didn’t see that working out so well – not that he was willing to risk it anyway.

How do I kill you? he thought as he formed a new spear.

He kept ahead of the wolf, mostly because it had suffered a traumatic brain injury that should have already killed it. The fact that it was on its feet at all felt like a cruel joke. That it could not only move, but kept fighting, made Velik wonder if some god had a personal grudge with him. Whatever the cause, he couldn’t deny that the monster was still a massive threat.

[Phalanx] was his only means of offense, but the problem was that it wasn’t really meant for that. The spears were supposed to ward off blows from multiple sources, not penetrate heavily-armored monsters. He’d been using it wrong since the day he’d gotten it in the hopes that he could force it to merge with his actual combat skills, and that wasn’t working. Without the earring boosting his mystic stat by fifteen points, he wouldn’t be able to so much as scratch this monster.

Slipping through some thick branches to put another tree between him and the wolf, Velik materialized another spear. [Kinetic Charge] was the only way it was getting through anything, and even then, only if he shaped it into what was essentially a six-foot-long needle. Poking tiny holes was the best he could do. The spears didn’t even have the decency to survive the pinprick.

Short of merging a skill in the middle of combat, again, his best chance at surviving was to reclaim his broken spear. Half a weapon was better than what he was currently using. The problem was that, while he was keeping ahead of the champion, he wasn’t really putting enough distance between them to circle back around. He was also vaguely aware in the back of his mind that he was well outside the boundary of the wolf’s domain, but it continued to pursue him anyway.

There was no escaping then. Offense was out as long as the best he could do was throw [Phalanx] spears up between them. [Kinetic Charge] was quickly wearing him down, and all [Apex Hunter] had to say about the fight was that he’d been an idiot not to run the second he’d spotted the wolf.

If I can’t get away from it and I can’t get around it, there’s only one thing left to try.

The healing potion had been working on him for a few minutes now, and he was as close to full strength as he was going to get. It was time to be bold. He dodged around a tree, pivoted hard on his lead foot to circle the trunk, and darted past the wolf, coming so close that he actually wove between its legs as it reacted to his sudden change in direction.

As he’d hoped, the tree being there prevented it from spinning around and snatching him up in its jaws. He’d even accounted for the possibility of it kicking at him with its rear legs and managed to dodge that. He was ten feet past its back end and silently congratulating himself for his daring risk when the wolf’s tail slammed into him.

Velik saw it coming just in time to throw himself sideways and soften the blow. It still blew him off his feet to sail fifty feet through the air. He narrowly missed clipping a tree on the way, not through any skill or foresight on his part, but to blind luck, then struck the ground and bounced twice.

He rolled to his feet, shook his head once to try to get some of the blurriness out of his vision, and scrambled forward as best he could without running into something. At best, he had seconds before the monster caught up with him, and he couldn’t afford to waste a single one.

Unsure if he was even going the right way, Velik took off running at full speed. The sun had fully set by this time, but even with the blow he’d just taken making it hard to focus, the darkness hid no secrets from his eyes. The sound of crashing trees behind him let him know that the wolf was coming after him and how far back it was – not as far as he would have liked, but maybe far enough.

There!

Without slowing down, Velik threw his body into a no-handed cartwheel and snatched up the top half of his spear. The shaft was only two feet long, its end a bundle of splinters with cracks running up through the wood. It probably wouldn’t withstand the rigors of combat, which meant he had, at best, one final shot with it. It needed to be a good one.

He looped around the next tree and saw the wolf coming for him. Blood seeped out from between its teeth and splattered in great blobs to the carpet of dead leaves and churned earth beneath it, and little rivulets stained its black fur from all the pinprick strikes he’d given it. He’d definitely hurt it, just maybe not enough to give him the opening he needed.

One thing he’d learned was that [Kinetic Charge] was more versatile than he’d thought when he’d first picked it. His weapon wasn’t the only thing he could build up energy behind, though doing it to his body put an uncomfortable amount of strain on him. Discomfort beat death, however, so when he started charging at the wolf, his half-spear gripped in his hand, his every step felt like he was straining against invisible hands trying to hold him back.

He watched the muscles in the wolf’s chest and legs tense as it shifted its weight to lunge at him, teeth bared. It wouldn’t make the mistake of letting him back those obsidian shards without tearing him apart again, and he knew it. Even if he could somehow trick it and slip between its jaws, he didn’t think half a spear was going to cut it.

So, when he leaped, he aimed higher. Empowered by [Kinetic Charge], he flew forty feet into the air. The wolf, slowed from its many injuries, reacted with relative sluggishness. Had Velik tried this at the start of the fight, it would have picked him out of the air, chewed him up, and swallowed him. This time, it was too slow.

Its neck flexed as its head snapped up, trying to keep track of the rapidly approaching [Duskbound] human. Even wounded, it almost got him. A fang slashed across Velik’s leg, slicing deep and knocking him into a spin that ruined his aim.

One chance. Don’t screw this up.

His body completed the first revolution and the wolf’s face came back into view. Velik’s half-spear was out of position to strike, and without being able to use his second hand to help control it, he struggled to fix that problem. Without thinking, he activated [Phalanx] and created a phantasmal shaft that reached up and twined itself around the broken remnant of his old spear.

On the second revolution, he was ready. He thrust the spear forward with both hands and released every bit of [Kinetic Charge] he was still holding onto. The spear sank into the monster’s eye, all the way past where it transitioned into conjured material, halting about five feet back. That thing has to be scraping the back of its skull. It’s dead. Please, be dead.

Velik slammed bodily into the wolf’s snout, rebounded into open air, and fell thirty feet to the ground, where he lay still and stared at the dark shadow looming over him. Come on. Die. You’re dead. Where’s the system message?

The wolf’s face peered down at him, one of its crimson eyes ruined and weeping black blood. It took a hesitant step forward. Then, without warning, it toppled sideways.

[You have slain Velik the Black Fang (champion elite, level 44).]