Writathon project: Duskbound Chapters 46-48 (Patreon)

Chapter 46

Fetching the remains of his spear out of the monster’s ruined eye was Velik’s first task. Unfortunately, the phantasmal shaft he’d constructed out of [Phalanx] had shattered into motes of light, leaving the tangible, physical portion buried out of sight. That was why, after drinking another healing potion, he was standing on the dead wolf’s face with one arm buried up to the shoulder in gore while he blindly groped for the weapon.

Thank Morgus this shirt has [Mending] on it. It would never come clean without that.

His hand brushed against something hard and slender enough to wrap his fingers around. With a sickening squelch, he pulled on it and slowly retracted the spear. Its shaft was even more battered, probably six inches shorter from all the chunks of wood that had broken loose. The head was still in good-shape, albeit dyed black with monster blood.

This, on the other hand, might never recover, even with [Mending].

Velik didn’t have the decarmas to replace the spear, and he was days away from anything remotely resembling safety. [Phalanx] was his only defense, and while he was confident that he could kill monsters around his level with the skill, taking on elites was another story entirely. It would be faster to slink back home, run all the way down to the city, fence the champion seeds he already had, buy a new spear, and run all the way back out here than it would be to try to kill enough monsters to earn the decarmas himself.

He hoped it wouldn’t come down to that. Velik hopped down, gave the wolf one last, searching look, and strode away to find the other half of his spear. He lined them up together, lined a straight stick up at the break, and used a ragged strip of cloth to tie them all together. Given how fast [Mending] normally worked, he figured he’d know if it was working in an hour or two. It’d probably take a full day to actually repair the damage, but he’d feel a lot better just knowing that the magic could fix things.

In the meantime, he rested his back against a tree and looked at the champion seed he’d taken from the wolf. The words of the system message raised more questions, but gave nothing in the way of answers.

[Champion Seed: Used to grow a champion elite monster to guard a specified location. Requires mana to flourish.]

[Champion: Velik the Black Fang (level 44).]

[Current Owner: Velik]

[Current Reserve: 0/270]

What does it mean? Does Chalin create the champions and name them? Did he name this one after me? And why does it have my class as part of its name? That can’t be a coincidence. It definitely used two of my class skills in our fight.

“Morgus’s hairy balls, that’s a big wolf,” a voice said from fifty feet away.

Seriously? Where were you ten minutes ago? Velik mentally demanded. He glanced up and saw Torwin standing there, his bow held next to him and his other hand on his hip. Frowning, he peered at the corpse and said, “Level 44? How the hell did you ever kill that?”

“Obstinance and luck, mostly,” Velik said. He pulled himself back to his feet. “I was kind of hoping you’d show up and help.”

“I would have if I’d known you were fighting something like this. I figured I was pretty close when the compass shifted directions, and I wanted to see what it was that had it wiggling around like a rent girl passing by a freshly docked ship. Followed your tracks the rest of the way in.”

“What tracks?” Velik asked blandly. He knew he didn’t leave anything as mundane as footprints behind when he walked, not with [Apex Hunter] in his skill roster.

Torwin just winked before turning his attention back to the wolf. “Shame we don’t have the time or storage capacity to properly harvest this. Level 44 has got to have some good stuff in it.”

“I’ve never bothered.”

“No? Lot of money to leave behind, but then… I suppose you’d have no one to sell any materials to or process them on your behalf, never mind transporting them. Still, something this high a level ought to be worth taking a few things.” Torwin circled around the corpse, stopping at the teeth. “Those’re interesting. And… uh… that’s a big hole in the tongue.”

Velik felt Torwin’s eyes on him and was suddenly acutely aware that his clothes were soaked in not only blood, but saliva. “I told you, obstinacy and luck.”

“So it would seem,” Torwin chuckled. “But don’t sell yourself short. A kill like this takes a great deal of skill and raw power.”

Do I tell him about the name? Would that make him suspicious of me?

If he decided to share, there was no taking it back. For the moment, it was easier to put off making a decision. Torwin had been helpful, but Velik knew better than to trust someone just because they’d had a few kind words and done him a favor or two. He’d learned that lesson a year after the incident when some local boys had started showing up in the woods near the edge of town.

Velik had been starved for human contact, they’d been friendly, and he’d thought he was making progress towards getting the town to accept him again. A week went by, he’d shown up at the usual meeting spot, and two men armed with clubs had been waiting for him. He’d only barely gotten away with his life, and he’d learned to stay far, far away from Deshir that day.

The worst part of it was that, to this day, he still didn’t know if those kids had betrayed him or if their families had merely found out they’d been talking to him and decided to correct that behavior. Either way, those two men had almost killed him and Velik had learned a valuable lesson about being vulnerable.

“What are you doing?” Velik asked.

“There’s some mana pooled in the teeth. They’re good base material for some daggers, maybe a spearhead or a short sword,” Torwin explained. He was brandishing a curved knife in one hand while holding the wolf’s lip back with the other. “We’d need a full team to harvest something this big, but I can pick up a few of the more valuable and easy to collect pieces, just so the whole thing’s not wasted.”

“How do you know what parts are valuable? Just something you pick up over time?”

“Partially, but it’s also a safe assumption that if the monster has mana in some part of its body, that someone, somewhere, can find a use for it. So when you have an unfamiliar or, in this case, unique monster, you can’t go wrong targeting the highest concentrations of mana if you need to be picky about what to take. For this monster, that means the teeth.”

He couldn’t help but feel a flash of annoyance when he considered how much wealth he’d abandoned over the years. Thousands and thousands of monsters had been left where they’d fallen, food for scavengers. There was no telling how useful some of those monster parts would have been, if he’d known what to take and who could use it. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. He had nobody to trade it to.

Something must have shown on his face, because Torwin laughed and said, “Most normal monsters aren’t worth much. It’s the elites that have the good stuff, and even then, not all of them. Here, come help me and I’ll show you how to pop these out without damaging them.”

Somewhat mollified, Velik left his bound-together spear on the ground and walked over to the corpse. At Torwin’s direction, he held the lip up so the older hunter could use both hands. After watching the knife work required to cut the tooth loose, Velik took a turn at it himself.

“Not as easy as you made it look,” he observed after he’d butchered the process.

“That’s alright! Nobody gets everything right on the first try. Here, do it again on this one. The smaller ones don’t have such deep roots.”

  *

He’d gone to sleep months ago, all too aware that his body needed the rest while his mind was elsewhere. There was always something more to do – new monsters to be made, new people to be corrupted, new territory to be claimed. As long as everything went as planned, it was entirely possible to hibernate through all of the busy work.

Things were not going according to plan. Something was cutting the threads, unraveling the nodes he’d placed to channel his mana through. Territory was shrinking. That needed to be corrected, but he couldn’t do that while he slept. His mind had to be called back, had to take control again.

He hated returning to his body. His own flesh repulsed him, the one thing he couldn’t shape. No matter how hard he tried, he was trapped in a form he despised. Escaping that prison was all that mattered, and something was preventing him from reaching that goal.

Eyes opened, first one, then two, then twenty. His many arms ceased their autonomous work and heeded his command, becoming still for the first time since his hibernation had started. The animals his body had been working on gasped out desperate, dying breaths, slowly succumbing to the grievous wounds he’d shaped into their flesh. Without his magic actively working to sustain them through the transformations, they couldn’t escape their ultimate fate, not that he cared.

He was too distracted to pay attention, too intent on following the severed thread of his favorite creation. Someone had destroyed it, and he needed to know who.

Chapter 47

The [Mending] enchantment on the spear wasn’t fixing the damage, or if it was, it was doing it far too slowly. Torwin was done cutting everything he wanted to claim off the corpse, and Velik had played along as a way to pass the time. Without the mana sensing skill to help him pick out the important bits, he wouldn’t be able to do much harvesting on his own, but a brief search of the system store had revealed a few pieces of gear that could offset his lack of the requisite skill, so the knowledge might be helpful in the future.

But it had been three hours, and checking on his weapon had revealed no change. “Bad luck,” Torwin said when Velik excused himself to go see the progress. “That’ll be expensive to fix.”

“It also means a long, dangerous trip back to a safer stretch of the woods. I’ll struggle to kill anything even close to my level without a weapon.”

“It’s a system store weapon, isn’t it?” Torwin asked. “Just feed it the seed you got from this champion? Or any of them, I guess, but the higher the level, the better.”

Velik pulled the champion seed out of his bag and studied it. Like all the others, it looked like a literal seed – oblong, hard-shelled, jet black except for a single slash of crimson-red going through it. The color was the only difference from every other one he’d collected. “How does this help?”

It belatedly occurred to him that Torwin had some sort of analyzing skill, and Velik didn’t know if it worked on objects as well as people. He didn’t need this particular champion’s name revealed to the other hunter, and pulling the seed out might have given Torwin a chance to get a good look at it.

Torwin didn’t seem to notice. “It’s part of why they’re so valuable. I thought I explained this already when I took those first two to sell. Enchanters can use them to increase the power of your equipment.”

“Right, I remember that, but… how does that help? I’m not an enchanter.”

“If it’s a system piece, it doesn’t matter. The system just needs the raw material and it does the work for you. It’s probably one of the biggest advantages to getting your gear directly from the system instead of having someone make it, though it’s debatable if it’s worth the price tag.”

“Then, using this seed on my spear could repair it?” Velik asked.

“And strengthen it at the same time.”

“How do I use it?”

The process wasn’t all that complicated, or at least Torwin made it seem easy when he explained it. There were some system menus involved, but with the older hunter explaining how to navigate to the spot Velik needed, he was quickly able to use up the champion seed to upgrade his spear.

[Blood Seeker has been infused with the essence of the champion, Velik the Black Fang.]

[Blood Seeker has been upgraded from epic to legendary quality.]

[Blood Seeker has become Harbinger of Dusk.]

Before his eyes, the weapon transformed. Where before the shaft had looked like smooth, dark wood, now it was matte-black metal. The two pieces had twined together, fusing back into one flawless length of – What is this even made of? It’s not steel. Too light. Whatever it was, it was solid and strong to Velik’s cursory inspection.

More importantly, the weapon had gained more stats, bringing his bonus from 5 physical up to 15 physical and 5 mystic, and it had gained a new enchantment on top of its old ones. Now, it had [Shape Shifting], [Bleeding], [Sharp], [Mending] from before, and [Mana Drinker] as well. The name made it obvious enough what it did – it took mana from anything he could stab it into. What the spear did with that mana wasn’t specified, however.

Easy enough to find out, I hope.

“What’s [Mana Drinker] do with the mana it takes?” he asked.

Torwin sucked in a sharp breath. “You got [Mana Drinker]?”

“Is that rare?”

“A bit more than that? Must have been a hell of a champion seed you fed to that thing.”

It had been both the highest level monster Velik had ever personally seen and a champion elite, so he supposed that qualified. It didn’t answer his question, however. “So, what does it do?”

“It’s generally used with other enchantments, especially ones that can be fueled by the user. A lot of wands, for example, work by having a spell bonded to them. The wielder feeds mana into the wand, the spell activates. [Mana Drinker] isn’t part of that setup because it’s rare and expensive, and because it would require you to find some monster with mana to steal, then poke them physically with the wand to get it.”

“But poking things with a spear is what it’s all about, so I’m good there.”

“Right. But if your spear doesn’t have an enchantment on it that actually requires an outside source of mana to fuel it, then [Mana drinker] is a lot less useful. It’ll still help, don’t get me wrong. [Mending] will be able to eat up that excess mana to restore your spear to pristine condition much, much faster. Everything it does now, it’ll do better, assuming you’re fighting monsters with mana for you to steal.”

It sounded situationally useful, at best, but maybe Velik was just underestimating it. The important part, to him, was that the infusion of power from the champion seed has repaired the damage, and the upgraded stats didn’t hurt either. With another five or six hours until dawn, he might be able to find and kill the next champion.

There can’t be that many more of these things left. Between the two of us, we’ve killed close to a dozen.

“Don’t underestimate how powerful [Mana Drinker] is. Even if you don’t have a good enchantment to funnel the mana into, just stealing from a target is a huge handicap for them. This giant wolf, for example, is so big that I can almost guarantee it needed magic just to keep it moving around. If you’d been able to attack its mana, you could have slowed it down, probably stopped it from using some abilities like whatever it did to that one tree over there with the burns all over it. It would have been a much easier fight.”

“That’s good,” Velik said. “I hope I don’t encounter anything this strong again, but you never know. There’s at least one more champion out there.”

“Or this might be the last one. Maybe all that’s left is whatever’s behind them,” Torwin argued. “That would be nice. Even if we killed it tonight, there’s still weeks or even months of clean up left to do in this region.”

“You’re sticking around for that?” Velik asked, surprised. He’d expected the professional monster hunters to clear out once they’d destroyed the source of the infestation.

“Job’s not done until all the monsters are gone.”

“I don’t think you’ll ever leave if you want to kill all of them. I’ve been trying to do that for years. There were times when I’d go weeks without seeing another one, but they always come back.”

“The big ones need to be killed, at least. Anything over level 20 is too much of a threat, and all the elites need to be killed. I have a suspicion this is going to be a long job, and probably one that’s going to require more than just me and my apprentice to finish.”

Velik could scarcely imagine a world in which no monsters roamed the forests of the frontier. What would I even do with my life? Go somewhere else, I guess. And then do what?

"Well, I've got another hour or two before I call it a night, and I suppose you’ve got until the sun comes back up. Shall we see what’s next in the chain?” Torwin asked.

“I suppose that would be a good idea,” Velik replied, brandishing his newly improved spear. He couldn’t wait to see how it did in battle.

  *

This druid girl, Sildra, was alright in a fight, but not reliable. At first, Jensen had tried to treat her like an ally, but he’d quickly realized that was putting too much trust in her capabilities. It was obvious that she’d had no training. She got distracted easily, couldn’t focus on multiple monsters at a time, and couldn’t handle watching his flank for him.

It was easier to use solo tactics, even if they weren’t necessarily the most efficient way to go about the hunt, than it was to try to explain to her what he needed her to do. It wasn’t that she was stupid. She just didn’t have the training to pull her weight. So instead, he mostly just pretended she wasn’t there, and if she incidentally killed a few monsters, well, that made his job a bit easier.

That was the theory, at least. In truth, she’d gotten in trouble a few times, fights that maybe she could have managed to extricate herself from, but maybe not. Either way, he’d given her some support, she’d thanked him afterwards, and they’d continued on in the same manner.

“Excuse me, sir,” one of the loggers he’d been protecting from monstrous aggression said. “Not really my place to ask, but what level are you? You wiped those monsters out like it was nothing.”

“Eh? Level?” Jensen considered the question. It was kind of rude, maybe not as bad as using something like [Identify] on a person, but still… Screw it. He’s not trying to be rude; he just doesn’t know any better. “19.”

“Wow, really? I’m level 17 and I couldn’t come close to doing what you did.”

“Well, I’m sure you’d chop down a tree in half the time it’d take me,” Jensen told him. He glanced back at the closest monster corpse, riddled with arrow wounds, though most of the arrows had already faded into nothingness, and saw that Sildra had already walked away. She was nowhere in sight, but her tracks were plainly visible. “Sorry, I need to go catch up to my, uh, partner.”

Without waiting for the logger to reply, he hurried off.

  *

Level 17? Those two can’t be the only ones. Who else is out here with you?

Chapter 48

Sildra had known she’d miss Gorm when he left, but she hadn’t known how much. He’d been something of a friend to her, even if he was only there because of her mother’s money. He’d gone beyond the stipulations of his contract to help her complete her system quest, and even stuck around past its expiration while she found her feet with her new class.

The hired monster hunter was probably more skilled than Gorm, but he was much less personable. He made plans, didn’t bother to tell her what her role in them was supposed to be, and then got annoyed when she didn’t do her part. His attempts to explain what he’d wanted her to do and why after the fact had fairly dripped with condescension.

Sadly, he was the only one going out of his way to look for monsters to fight, and while her progress was incredible, she was only level 9. [Lunar Flare] was an excellent skill and she’d killed monsters that are a higher level a few times, but there was a difference between frying a level 12 and fighting off a level 20. For the time being, she needed Jensen’s help, and that meant putting up with his less-than-amazing personality.

Hopefully, getting a new skill at level 10 would start to change that. That would have to wait for tomorrow night, however. The sun would be up in an hour or so, and [Lunar Flare] worked best under a full moon. Having her only skill be dependent on both the time of day and phase of the moon was a bit of a pain, but she was hoping that she could rank it up a few times and loosen those restrictions. For the next few days, at least, she was as powerful as she could be under the circumstances.

“I’m going back to Deshir,” she told Jensen. “See you at the same place tomorrow night?”

“Assuming I can drag myself out of bed. I’m exhausted from you keeping me up all night,” he said with a snort.

That was another thing she didn’t like about him. His jokes weren’t funny, but he thought they were. At first, she’d interpreted it as him making a pass at her, but she’d quickly realized that no, that was just how he was – a little awkward, weirdly full of himself, and rich enough to get away with it. She wondered if he had even a single real friend back home, or if he was surrounded by nothing but sycophants hoping to get a turn rifling through his coin purse.

“I’m sure you’ll manage,” she said dryly. “Goodbye, Jensen.”

Something in her tone must have gotten through his thick skull, because his face twisted into a stricken grimace. “Sorry,” he muttered, so quietly that she wasn’t even sure he was talking to her. “Didn’t think about how that sounded until after I’d already said it.”

“Be careful on your way back. Don’t want you getting killed by a monster because you’re too exhausted to defend yourself,” was all she said as she walked away.

  *

Why is the gate open?

None of the frontier towns kept their gates open at night. That was like inviting the monsters in, and they needed no invitation. The problem was keeping them out, even with the gates closed. Some of them could fly, or climb, or were just stealthy enough to get in some other way. If the gate needed to be open for some reason, there were always members of the watch there to supervise it.

She scanned the walls, but there was no one. That didn’t prove anything, of course. Her night vision was decent, but not exceptional. It was possible she just wasn’t seeing anyone in the dark, but she doubted it. She’d always seen them every other time she came back to town. There were even a few who’d make small talk with her while she stood at the base of the wall waiting for the sun to rise and the gates to open.

Was there some kind of invasion? There’s no damage though… Maybe they just opened them early for the day.

Something about that idea didn’t sit right with her, and Sildra found herself hurrying across the open fields to investigate. She cast furtive glances about as she approached while trying to conquer her paranoia that a monster was going to jump out from a patch of bean plants and assault her, not because she didn’t fully believe it was possible, but because if one tried, she’d turn it to ash before it got close.

A hundred feet away from the open gate, she finally saw movement. A man walked into the entrance and peered out. He was tall—taller than her, anyway—and had a distinctive silhouette thanks to the pegleg strapped on where his left foot was supposed to be and a cane he leaned on to help keep his balance. He’d been a logger who’d lost the limb in a monster attack six years ago who'd retired from leaving the village and had taken up carpentry instead.

What’s he doing here?

“There you are!” he said. “Get inside. Hurry!”

The sound of his voice confirmed what she’d already known; the man was Vickers, someone who had no business filling in for anyone on the watch. If he was manning the mysteriously open gate, something bad had happened while she was away.

“What’s going on?” she asked once she’d reached him. “Where’s the watch at?”

“Follow me,” he said shortly. “The call’s gone out.”

“What call?”

Ignoring her baffled expression, Vickers stomped away. “Move it, missy. I’ve been stuck out here for hours, waiting for you to get back.”

Sildra stopped walking. “No, I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what happened. Why is this gate open? Where did the watch go? Why are you here instead of them?”

Vickers spun back around, his gnarled face twisted up in an angry scowl. “Knew you’d be trouble,” he said. “Ain’t my job to explain nothing to you, just to fetch you. Don’t think I won’t tan your hide just because you grew up some.”

“Try it, old man,” she snapped. “See how well it goes for you.”

Before either of them could do anything, something small, dark, and furry leaped out of the shadow of the wall. It angled itself to race past Vickers and leaped at Sildra’s face, passing through the moonlight just long enough for her to identify it as the biggest flash maw hare she’d ever seen. Without even thinking, she hit it with a blast of [Lunar Flare], throwing it off course and sending it smacking hard into a house fifteen feet behind her.

“What in the—” she started to say, only to cut herself off as Vickers raised his can in one hand and lunged forward.

For a moment, she thought he was going after the hare. He was far too late to do anything, but there was no other reasonable explanation. It wasn’t until the cane came down on her shoulder that she realized the truth. He attacked me! The only reason he’d hit her shoulder instead of her head was that she’d jerked back a step from him.

Vickers overbalanced, not a difficult feat with all his forward momentum on his peg leg and his cane being wielded like a club, and fell flat on his face. Without hesitation, he scrabbled across the ground to clutch at her ankle.

“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled as she shook him off.

The flash maw hare wasn’t dead. Smoke rolled off its scorched fur, wafting away to reveal patches of reddened skin beneath, but that wasn’t enough to stop it. It took two hopping steps before launching itself through the air at her again, only this time she was too busy fending off Vickers to dodge out of the way in time.

The hare hit her with its full weight, knocking her over and leaving her open to its needle-like teeth. Blood poured from her stomach where the bone spur sticking out of its hind leg gouged her, and its mouth clamped down on her already injured shoulder, drawing a scream out of her.

[Lunar Flare] bloomed around her, searing the monster and blistering her skin from the wash of heat. It was that or let herself be eaten, and she’d recover from burns. A second [Lunar Flare] followed that one, and with three solid shots laid down on the flash maw hare, it finally succumbed.

[You have slain a flash maw hare (level 14).]

[You have been awarded 1 decarma.]

[You have advanced to level 10. +1 Mental, +1 free point.]

[You have unlocked a new class skill slot.]

She would have been more excited about that if she wasn’t still grappling with Vickers. Now that he had her on the ground, his pegleg wasn’t hobbling him quite so much. He quickly climbed on top of her, one hand holding both of hers over her head and his other with a raised cane in it. “Should have heeded the call, stupid girl,” he snarled.

Sildra has no idea what was wrong with the old man, but she wasn’t about to let herself get beaten to death. Whatever the fallout was, she’d deal with it later. “Should have waited another half an hour to jump me,” she said back.

[Lunar Flare] bloomed around Vickers, igniting his clothes in pale, moon-colored flames. The heat came and went in an instant, but that was long enough. Vickers hurled himself away from Sildra, screeching the whole while, and rolled back and forth across the ground as the skill burned him alive. She scrambled to her feet and scooped up his cane, though she wasn’t sure whether it was to protect herself with it or just to deny him the weapon.

[You have slain a corrupted seed bearer (level 18).]

What the hell is a corrupted seed bearer?!