Writathon project: Duskbound Chapters 53-55 (Patreon)

Chapter 53

Spending decarmas on gear was one thing. Even the compass was justifiable, and that was before considering that it had proved useful enough that Jensen’s master had borrowed it. Wasting it on disposables because he’d gotten himself backed into a corner was a different story. His father wasn’t going to be happy.

But that would only be a problem if Jensen was alive to hear the old man complain about it, so he didn’t hesitate. Internally wincing, he bought three alchemical bombs from the system store for two thousand decarmas each, more than ten times what an alchemist could have charged him. But an alchemist couldn’t make the bombs appear in his hands, and that was what he needed.

The first one went back down the street to the approaching mob, where it could do the most damage and hopefully slow them down. It exploded, igniting the air in a bloom of fire that shot up higher than the roofs. Monsters were hurled in every direction, including toward Jensen. Fortunately, they were in no condition to do anything remotely resembling threatening.

Maybe I can convince Master Torwin to part with one of those champion seeds and recoup the cost. Then Dad never has to know.

The other two bombs went to the crowd in front of him. They were scattered, too far apart for even a pair of explosions to catch them all. Jensen got maybe half of them, judging by the cascade of notifications the system dropped on him, but the ones still alive were injured. Before he could take action to finish any of the monsters off, the house to his right groaned alarmingly.

It had a huge chunk of wood missing from the side, enough that the front was starting to sag. The more it tilted forward, the faster it shifted. Oh, hell. Jensen took off at a run, picking a path that led him away from the collapsing house and through the depleted ranks of the monsters. He made it forty or fifty feet before a great boom shook the entire street. Chunks of flying stone and wood filled the air as a dust cloud rolled outward.

Eight more kill notifications all came in on top of each other. I guess the system counts a house dropping on them as my fault, he thought with a wry smile. A few of the ones from the pursuing mob that had been thrown backwards by his first bomb were just now climbing to their feet, all of them relatively uninjured due to either distance or just a high physical stat. There were probably a handful on the other side of the wreckage, as well, but Jensen was less concerned about them for the moment.

Now that he’d evened the odds a bit, he thought he could probably finish off the leftovers. His bow came up, an arrow appeared on the string, and he got to work.

[You have advanced to level 20. +1 Physical, +1 free point.]

[You have unlocked a new class skill slot.]

[A class evolution is available.]

The first two notifications weren’t a surprise. He’d known he was going to level up again any time now, and winning a fight against so many monsters had been enough to push him over the edge. The third notification, though, was a different story. He was almost afraid to open it up and see what the options were. Torwin had seemed convinced that [Ranger] wouldn’t be among them, and that Jensen should focus his efforts elsewhere.

There were still monsters alive, so he resisted the temptation to investigate the prompt. Later, once he was safe, he’d see what his choices were. It would probably be best to wait for Torwin to return before making a decision, but it wouldn’t hurt to take some time to form his own thoughts. Before that, he needed to pick off the survivors and then get back to the town hall.

I hope I didn’t screw anything up for her when I dropped that house. There’s no way they didn’t hear that all over town.

  *

It was quickly becoming apparent that whatever this business with the corrupted seeds was, today was merely the culmination of months or years of work. There were plenty of uninfected people, but they were all noncombatants. More than that, they were classes that used tools, not weapons. The watch had all been taken over. All the logging crews were in the same state. Anyone who had jobs that had anything to do with monsters, even incidentally, seemed to have been targeted.

That left a lot of farmers, carpenters, cooks, and seamstresses in town, and Sildra had already saved a dozen of them held in individual rooms. They’d all been tied to a table like Mrs. Coru, and through them, Sildra had learned where the rest of the town was. In hindsight, it wasn’t that surprising that the corrupted seed bearers had stuffed their prisoners in the town’s jail, except for the fact that there were only five cells and they’d stuffed hundreds of people into them.

Townsfolk had been dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, either through some sort of lie if the attacker was someone they trusted or just by raw force if there wasn’t a corrupted person close to them. They’d been shoved into cells, packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and when they’d run out of room, they’d locked the overflow into small offices and put guards on them. A few people had been killed trying to fight back, but the corrupted faction of the town had overwhelmed them before any real resistance could form.

They were debating how best to overwhelm the corrupted seed bearers left to guard the prisoners, a difficult proposition considering Sildra’s ax was the only weapon they had between them, when a bone-rattling crash shook the whole building. Everything immediately went wrong at that point. Some people panicked and ran for the door. Others started yelling for everyone else to calm down, inadvertently drawing the attention of the guards in the process.

Two of them rushed down the hall, saw the freed prisoners, and immediately attacked. The closest human found himself skewered on a spear before anyone could react, then the fighting started for real. Sildra found herself caught in a press of bodies as some people surged forward to attack the monsters and others tried to flee to safety. As the only person with an actual weapon, she’d have thought the rescued prisoners would make way for her to get to the fight, but that wasn’t the case.

By the time she got to the forefront, both of the monsters were dead, along with four other people. The only upside to the fiasco was that it brought their weapon count from one to three, not that either of the two men who claimed those wood-cutting axes knew much about how to use them in a fight. Splitting a log on a stump was not the same as a battle to the death with a monster that looked like one of their neighbors.

The other unfortunate side effect was that about half the people who’d been laying on the floor in the assembly hall were up and on their feet, now. It seemed that whatever toll the transformation took on them, they recovered from it quite quickly. The remaining members of the town watch were organizing and arming them, which left Sildra’s group of nine townsfolk with three axes up against about twenty-five monsters, all of whom had either a spear or an ax.

Their only options were to retreat or to fight, and with everyone having a loved one still stuffed in one of those jail cells, there was very little argument about which course to take. “We’re falling back,” she ordered. “We need reinforcements and weapons, and we’re not going to find either here. Head out the back, stick together, arm yourselves, and we’ll regroup at the general store down the street.”

There was some harshly whispered arguing, but in the end, no one thought they could stand up to thirty or more monsters with just three axes and no real combat experience besides Sildra’s. As soon as she explained that her skills only worked when the moon was up and that she was no stronger than anyone else right now, what little fight they had left went out of them.

She could only hope that Jensen had been successful, that the booming sound was his doing and that it meant good news. Much as she hated to admit it, without his help, she didn’t see a way to rescue everyone else. Short of getting a pickaxe and digging a tunnel from the nearest cellar, there was no way to get under town hall and into those cells without crossing the assembly room, which meant a ridiculously one-sided fight.

Maybe a window I can come in through... No, the stairs going up and town are at the back of the hall. If I came in from the second floor, I could take the staircase directly down. I wouldn’t have to cross the floor then, just go down a single flight of stairs. It’s possible nobody would notice. That’s assuming there aren’t more of them upstairs, though. I have no idea what’s going on up there.

Every plan had risks, so many that she couldn’t see any that didn’t end with her getting killed. Even now, with what she’d already done, there was a chance the monsters would kill their remaining prisoners. She was hoping the bodies were too valuable alive, but that hope was based on the idea that they needed somebody who was still breathing to put one of their seeds in.

Everything she’d seen so far supported that idea, but there was so much Sildra didn’t know. It was a risk, doing what she’d done, but she’d saved eight people by taking it. And she’d confirmed that her mother wasn’t among the corrupted, which meant she was probably in a cell.

She couldn’t give up, not as long as there was a chance, but she had to admit, she didn’t have a clue how to proceed.

Chapter 54

It was a lot easier to kill a champion with another person helping, even if they were doing it during the day when Velik was at his weakest. So far, they’d managed four and it wasn’t even noon yet. They were trading off who got to keep the seed, and a greedy little part of Velik had awoken. Torwin had described some of the more useful tools and gear for a hunter, things that Velik hadn’t known existed, but which he now desperately wanted.

“Extradimensional storage is my next big purchase,” Torwin told him. “It’s ruinously expensive, though, and it’s a constant drain on your magic. You can’t even power it without a high enough mystic stat. But it’s so useful!”

It certainly sounded handy, but at a hundred thousand decarmas just for a space the size of a backpack, it’d be a long, long time before Velik purchased any for himself. There were so many useful things he could pick up for a small fraction of that price, things that would make him stronger and let him hunt more powerful monsters safely.

Torwin stopped abruptly and made a halting motion with his hand. “Trouble back at town,” he said. “Jensen spent the decarmas to buy a whispering wind. One moment.”

What’s a whispering wind?

While he waited, Velik decided to look it up. The store had a search function, and it was easy enough to find exactly what that was. For the price of three thousand decarmas, it was a piece of alchemy comprised of some sort of air spirit trapped in a bottle. The user whispered their message into it, then released the spirit to fly to the addressee. With some limitations, the spirit would seek that person out and deliver the message.

There had to be cheaper methods of long-distance communication, but Velik wasn’t paying for it, so he just gave a mental shrug and chalked it up to the wastefulness of the nobility. He’d already known Jensen’s family was rich, so it didn’t much surprise him that he’d throw away huge sums of money on stuff like this.

Whatever the message was, Torwin’s face grew more and more grim. “The towns are under attack,” he finally said. “Not by a horde of monsters, but by those seed bearers we found, except they’re inside humans. From what they can tell, they’ve been there for a while, months at least. Deshir was completely taken over and they’re struggling to rescue the humans who haven’t been turned into monsters yet, and Jensen thinks the other towns are in a similar state.”

Chalin, did you do this, too?

“We might need to split up,” the old hunter said. “One of us keeps going, the other goes back and rescues the towns.”

Part of Velik demanded that he immediately start heading south. He’d been protecting those towns against the encroaching monsters for years, and just when he’d finally thought he was close to finding the source, something like this happened. He’d left their safety in the hands of an apprentice who’d failed to do the job, but to be fair, it wasn’t exactly a monster horde sweeping out of the forest. If he was right, the corrupted seed bearers had been building up their numbers long before Velik had left.

The other part wanted to press on, to find answers and his childhood friend. He was so close to finally resolving an issue that had plagued the frontier for a decade, an issue that, despite everything, he felt responsible for. Logically, he knew he’d been a child and that it wasn’t his fault, but the fact remained that if he and Chalin hadn’t gone into that old, ruined dungeon and found that class orb—or whatever it truly was—then none of this wouldn’t have happened. Intentional or not, they’d set off the chain of events that had led to the current problems.

“I could make it back in three days if I pushed and didn’t stop for sleep,” Velik said. “Maybe less if I don’t run into too many monsters.”

“Logically, it’d probably be better if you went back and I kept going. I’m a higher level and more experienced with this type of work. However, that’s my apprentice calling for help. I have an obligation. Additionally, if this infestation is producing monsters that can infiltrate towns, I’m going to need to start sending warning letters to other communities. No offense, but I don’t think you have the knowledge to handle that task.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Velik admitted.

Torwin nodded unhappily. “If we’re lucky, this will be contained to the frontier towns. Best not to rely on luck too much, not if we don’t have to. I’ll go back, take care of the corrupted seeds, and get the region mobilized. If it’s bad enough, I might even have to call the guild for reinforcements.”

“And I’ll keep following the compass until I reach the source.”

Hopefully I don’t run into another level 40 champion. I’m sure I’m close to leveling up again, but I don’t think 33 is going to be much better than 32. Maybe if I could get a skill merger…

He was no closer to that than when he’d started, unfortunately. [Phalanx] had seemed like a good idea at the time, but what he wanted and what the skill wanted weren’t the same thing. Trying to twist it to meet his needs had been a mistake, and he wasn’t sure how to find a middle ground that would allow him to incorporate it into his fighting style.

“Good luck,” Torwin said softly. “I’d hate to come back out here to find you dead. Be careful, and don’t hesitate to run from a fight that’s beyond you.”

“When am I ever not careful?”

“Didn’t you solo a champion elite more than ten levels higher than you yesterday night?”

“Hey, I won, didn’t I?”

“You should have run,” Torwin said flatly. “These aren’t meant to be fought alone. It’s frankly insane that you’re alive, no matter how strong your class is.”

There was some truth to that. Ending up inside that monster’s mouth without getting chewed on had been a huge determining factor in his victory. Prior to that, Velik had struggled to even damage such a powerful monster. But that wasn’t a strategy he was eager to repeat, so he had to acknowledge some wisdom in Torwin’s advice.

Then again, that particular champion’s domain seemed to move with it for some reason, so he wasn’t entirely sure escape had ever been an option, not that he’d tried all that hard to find out. Maybe I really am an idiot. But no, that thing had my name. It needed to die before Torwin saw it and started asking uncomfortable questions. I had good reasons to take the risks I did.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Run fast. Keep everyone safe.”

“I will,” the old hunter said. “Farewell for now. Find whatever’s making these monsters and put an end to it.”

On that, they agreed.

  *

He was pleased with how well his seeds were doing. There’d been some resistance, of course. That was to be expected. Inroads had been made, but there was only so much subterfuge could accomplish before force was required. Perhaps, if he’d had more time… But no, the nodes were being severed. He’d already lost his connection with too many of his creations.

New seeds would have to be made, and not the weak, numerous seeds that grew in clusters like grapes. Powerful seeds, the exemplars to all monsters, took time to craft. Sadly, that was a resource he suddenly found himself in short supply of. His guardian had been defeated, and more nodes were falling with each passing hour.

Loathe as he was to admit it, his strategy wasn’t performing as well as expected when he’d begun this project. There’d been too much opposition, too many setbacks. His elites had never quite managed to secure the foothold he desired, and while the monsters he’d unleashed into the savage wild lands were surviving, they weren’t truly thriving in the manner he’d envisioned.

For all those other problems, the seeds that had reached the border between man and monster were doing remarkably well. Three of the towns were resisting and would probably reclaim their homes with massive casualties, one had repelled the infestation easily, and the last, the one where he was most deeply entrenched, was likely to secure a total victory.

That wasn’t surprising. That town had served as his test site. He’d been sending his seed bearers there for over a year, slowly growing their ranks until they represented over a quarter of the town. He’d wanted to replicate that in the other towns, but the nodes being brought down had forced his hand, and he’d given the command early.

Other than that one level 19 running around, causing problems, he hadn’t anticipated much resistance. And in many respects, that had been a correct assumption. He’d merely erred in underestimating how much damage that level 19 could actually do.

In the end, it didn’t matter. The seeds were expendable. The nodes were expendable. Even the guardian was expendable. He could replace them, and he would. Even if this attempt failed, he’d just start building resources for another one. He’d already spread far and wide into the wilderness. The kingdoms of man would fall as well.

Chapter 55

Despite his plans to save the champion seeds to finance the rest of his life, the temptation to imbue his other piece of system gear with more power was almost overwhelming. The only thing that held Velik back was that his boots were the only viable target, and they weren’t that great to begin with. He’d only purchased them for the [Mending] enchantment, and only because he’d kept wearing through normal boots so quickly that it was becoming a hassle to keep replacing them.

He'd already hunted down three more champions, which had resulted in another level—with his free points both spent in mystic again—and a rank in both [Apex Hunter] and [Spear Warden]. His other two skills remained frustratingly stuck, though he got the feeling he was close to something happening with [Kinetic Charge]. As challenging as fighting champions that were four or five levels higher than him was, the battles weren’t forcing him to adapt in new ways anymore. He needed something else to challenge him if he was going to keep growing.

What that something would be, he wasn’t yet sure. His newly empowered spear was making short work of normal monsters in the deep wood now, and elites weren’t so common that he ran into them regularly. Even the champions would be almost impossible to stumble across if not for the compass guiding him. It would probably work for elites too, and maybe he’d adjust the settings to hunt for them once he was done with his current project, but he doubted they’d provide the push he was looking for.

He made good progress, but as the first week rolled by, he started to have concerns about his food supply again. Velik had no plans of returning before the matter was dealt with, if only because he was trusting Torwin to handle things back at the towns. The unfortunate truth was that he had no idea how close he was to finding the end of the trail he was following, and that if he’d known the precise locations of every champion he’d slain, he definitely could have planned a more efficient route.

He continued to fiddle with the compass, but no matter how he changed it around, all it ended up doing was producing false positives. Usually those related to non-champion monsters with skills that relied heavily on their mystic stat to power them. Sometimes the compass seemed to just draw him to a random place that was probably magical, but he couldn’t tell. He spent some time poking around a pool of luminous green water, but he lacked the knowledge or tools to take samples and analyze them.

At another spot he found a granite post, eight feet tall and a foot wide, that radiated heat so strongly that it would have burned his hand to touch it. Unsurprisingly, nothing grew within twenty feet of the post, and the brown was dried and cracked. It was at least obvious why the compass had pointed to it, but it wasn’t immediately helpful.

After that, he gave up again on fiddling with the compass’s settings and turned it back to pointing him toward mana-dense monsters. That was why he was confused when, four hours later, he found what appeared to be another weird, mana-rich site. It was a hole in the side of a hill, perfectly round and ten feet across. That would have been unusual enough on its own, but he could have dismissed the compass as merely pointing to a monster that was living underground.

The truly strange part of it was that the walls weren’t made of dirt and stone. The whole hill was like some giant scab caked with dirt, with the hole being a puncture into whatever titan was buried there’s soft flesh. If not for the fact that the compass pointed directly into that hole, Velik wouldn’t have even considered going inside. Images of the walls constricting and crushing him danced through his mind.

The compass didn’t waver, and that meant this was his next destination. Until he destroyed whatever had made this fleshy cave its home, he was stuck. Before he went inside, though, he took full stock of himself and his equipment.

[Name: Velik]

[Race: Human (Duskbound)]

[Class: The Black Fang]

[Level: 33]

[Physical: 103(+18)]

[Mental: 56(+2)]

[Mystical: 28(+20)]

[Free Points: 0]

[Decarma: 4885]

[Skills:]

[Apex Hunter (Rank 3)]

[Spear Warden (Rank 7)]

[Kinetic Charge (Rank 3)]

[Phalanx (Rank 2)]

[Gear:]

[Harbinger of dusk (+15Ph, +5My)]

[Hunter’s Cowl(+2Me)]

[Stalker’s Boots(+3Ph)]

[Survivalist’s Shirt]

[Self-Repairing cloak]

[Mystic’s Earring (+15My)]

There were nine more champion seeds filling his inventory, in addition to his remaining seven healing potions and one haste potion. The haste potion was system-purchased, and he knew exactly how it would affect him. The potions, on the other hand, were hand-crafted by alchemists. They worked, but not nearly as well as the ones he was used to buying. For the price, he couldn’t really argue, but he was strongly considering keeping one system potion on him for emergencies.

No, it’s fine. I killed my counterpart without a system healing potion. I can kill whatever this is, too.

He took a step in and hesitated when a gust of hot, moist air rolled past him. It’s not like I’ll never buy a system potion again. They don’t go bad. Better to have it now, just in case.

One thousand decarmas later, he slotted the system-produced healing potion into this pouch and entered the cave. The ground was softer than dirt, soft enough that he didn’t want to try fighting on it. His foot probably wouldn’t push through the material, but nobody liked having unstable footing when they were fighting for their life. If not for his high mental stat, he would have thought he was imagining it when the ground shifted under him, an ever so slight trembling that he almost didn’t notice.

But no, he could see it. Whatever this cave was, it was alive in some way. Maybe it was just magic, or maybe it really was some massive flesh-and-blood monstrosity buried under the earth. It was tempting to stab his spear into the wall to see if it bled before he went any deeper, but he was worried that doing that would make the cave clench up, blocking him from reaching whatever his compass was pointed at.

No, this is too important. I have to know before I go in here. If it prevents me from getting at whatever this thing is I’m hunting, then so be it. Better to be locked out and have to find a new target than to get crushed to death by the walls during a battle.

Backing all the way out, he reached out with his spear and pressed the point into the fleshy wall. At first, the wall dimpled, despite an impressive amount of pressure. Then, with an almost flatulent sigh, it gave way and the spear slipped inside a full foot before Velik encountered resistance. It felt like stone, hard enough to stop a casual strike, but not so dense that he couldn’t cut through if he really tried.

So, this is more of a layer of skin stretched across the tunnel than an actual creature buried underground. That’s… disgusting?

Thick black blood seeped out of the wound he’d made, but far less than he’d expected. The moment he removed his spear, the cut clotted over into a scab. A few more tests confirmed the floor and ceiling reacted the exact same way. The fleshy wall was just a mask disguising the natural stone beneath, which meant the odds of it suddenly coming alive and crushing him were low.

Even better, it didn’t seem to react to the prodding at all, other than to bleed thick, black monster blood for a second before sealing itself closed. No enemies showed themselves to investigate his prodding, either. There had to be more to the strange hole, but Velik was as assured of his safety as he could get and he wouldn’t find answers just standing around.

Taking a deep breath, he walked into the tunnel and descended into the darkness.

  *

Strange. What is this sensation?

He turned his senses outward, through the vast network of veins and nerves stitched into his domain. It was easy enough to find the interloper; he’d often tracked the progress of his minions as they hauled in fresh material. None of them had ever damaged his body before, though.

He had only vague recollection of the absence of pain, memories that weren’t even really his. They were remnants of another life, and it had been years since he’d felt anything but the unending torture of his flesh warping and spreading. Even the thoughts he’d consumed were brief flickers of light in a sea of agony.

He’d long since learned to disassociate from his body, returning to it only when necessary. Today, it appeared, would be one such day. Something approached. His central cluster was in danger, the one node that he couldn’t afford to have broken.

All danger was relative though. He’d long since prepared for an intruder. At his mental comment, fleshy embryonic sacs split open, spilling out the guardian monsters he’d held in stasis for years. They took a few minutes to come fully awake and ready to fulfill their purpose, but that wasn’t a problem. His cluster was hidden so far away from that entry that it would be hours before the intruder reached him even unimpeded.

It would never come to that, but he did hope his creations could take the intruder alive. After all, there was no point in wasting such a prime specimen. There was no telling what he could reshape it into.