DD1 ASC - Chapter 8 - Partners

Typhoeus stood alone in the main hall of the Adventurers Guild. All around him, people were conducting their business as they flitted back and forth between the large notice boards and the staffed counters on opposite sides of the room. His return from visiting the class stone had initially attracted a lot of attention, but as he just stood there wide-eyed in his confusion, the novelty of a dumbstruck level 1 mage in a golden dress had gradually worn off. He had tried to study the coloured slips of paper covering the notice boards, and while he recognised some of the creatures depicted on the bounties large enough to warrant an artist's sketch, his illiteracy prevented him from making heads nor tails of the notices besides from the fact that many of them were posted by the Alchemists Guild, their sigil of a half-full beaker tilted mid-pour over an orange triangle stamped prominently on each one.

He needed help. With the aid of his perception skill, Typhoeus was an excellent eavesdropper, and by listening in on the other adventurers, he was able to work out that the Alchemists Guild sponsored bounties were predominantly asking for harvested body parts from the wide variety of ‘monsters’ that human society deemed not only acceptable but commendable to murder for money. There were still plenty of kill requests posted on the boards, typically paid for by ordinary people or city officials who simply wanted a specific creature killed for either personal or financial reasons. The whole hall facilitated this grisly exchange, one that very occasionally included prolific humans on the long list of creatures who required extermination. The idea that he could potentially be paid by humans to hunt down and kill their own kind was something that Typhoeus found to be delightfully ironic.

The next stage in his plan was dependent on him levelling at a quick and steady pace, but he couldn't just go out into the wilds and start killing things indiscriminately. He needed his titanic rise to power to be not only plausible but also heavily documented, and for that, it was looking like he needed the one thing that he hated more than anything else. He needed other adventurers. If he was to blend in, then he needed to act like a normal level 1 mage which meant, at the very least, he needed to attract a meatshield to take the hits and hopefully a fair amount of the suspicion away from him. Someone young and naive would suit his needs best. Ideally, an adventurer who was just starting out who would be too inexperienced to notice the inconsistencies in 'Typh's' character and his inexplicably powerful class skills, but finding someone like that was far easier said than done.

There was a tremendous amount of variation in the levels of the adventurers present in the hall, but the vast majority of them seemed to already belong to groups similar in level and in the quality of their equipment. Typhoeus walked the length of the room as he wondered what to do next. While the hall was primarily filled with low levelled adventurers, that was by the standards of a level 199 dragon, and so far his cursory searches of the hall's occupants had yet to reveal anyone with a combat class below level 10. Considering that he had no equipment and the lowest possible level, he couldn’t imagine that he would be in particularly high demand with the ‘higher’ levelled groups, an assumption that was only strengthened by the way that their members made sure to avoid his eye contact whenever he got close.

Typhoeus came to a stop in front of a large poster that took up a wide stretch of a central noticeboard, the artist's sketch depicting a ferocious golden dragon standing proudly atop a craggy hill, its wings outstretched as if it were about to take flight. He couldn’t help but smile at the artwork; the drawing wasn’t great, the wings were too short, and the nose was far too long for one thing, but he was pretty sure that this was his bounty. A small part of him entertained the idea that if he could simply remove the large poster, then his adventurer problem would just go away, allowing him to return to his lair and live out a peaceful life in solitude, but he quickly quashed the thought. Even if he could go back, he wouldn’t, Typhoeus had already taken on a new class, and now he had to see his plan through. As usual, he couldn’t make out any of the written details on the poster, but he recognised the increasingly familiar sigil in the corner as belonging to the Alchemists Guild, and as the notice was about him, it was doubtful that it contained any information that he didn’t already know. Still, he found it oddly comforting to look at, and it was as good a place as any to stand while he scanned the room for low levelled adventurers.

He had been waiting around for some time when he noticed the arrival of someone else who didn’t quite fit in amongst the well-armed and well-dressed adventurers. On the far side of the hall was a gaunt looking woman dressed in filth stained rags who reeked of a heady mixture of barely constrained fear and determination. She was standing a good ten feet away from the boards as she strained her human eyes to peer at the smallest of notices, slowly moving from board to board, making sure to give the other adventurers a wide berth as she searched for something suitable for herself. The woman's posture was hunched forwards like she was trying to make herself small despite her above average height, and as she took her time looking at each notice, her eyes kept darting to the sides as if she was afraid that she would be thrown out of the hall at a moment's notice. She was so skittish that Typhoeus wasn't entirely convinced that she wouldn't bolt at the slightest of scares, but what was far more important than her temperament was her lowly status as a level 1 warrior.

There was something about her that Typhoeus instinctively liked, and he felt himself being inexplicably drawn to her as he confidently strode across the hall towards the agitated woman. He couldn’t help but smile as he realised how well she suited his purposes; she was much taller than him despite her poor posture, giving her a good physicality for a warrior, and with her low level, she shouldn’t have had her class for much more than a few weeks and would be unlikely to know much in the way of normal magecraft. As she was now, she was so underfed that she would almost certainly struggle with even the simplest of fights simply down to her near-complete lack of muscle mass, but that didn't matter to Typhoeus. He just needed her for cover.

"Hello, my name is Typh.” He said, extending his hand in what he now knew to be a flawless example of a typical human greeting. “I couldn’t help but notice that you are alone here. Are you looking for someone to work with?” Typhoeus asked the woman, her hazel eyes widening in shock as if her mind was rejecting the very idea that she was actually being approached.

She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering a few inches over his head as she likely read his level 1 mage tag as she exuded such delightful terror that it actually caused Typhoeus's stomach to rumble with hunger. They both looked down at his stomach as it continued with its rude noises for an awkwardly long period of time.

"Sorry about that; I haven't had a proper meal since last night," Typhoeus said, flashing his perfect teeth in a wide smile.

"It-its okay; I haven't eaten that recently myself." The warrior said sympathetically before belatedly shaking his offered hand. "I’m Arilla, and yes I am, looking that is, but...”

“But what?” He asked, unsure as to what reservations she could possibly have given her obviously desperate state.

“Is this a joke? Did someone put you up to this?” Arilla asked, her jaw tensing and her eyes narrowing with suspicion as she stared intensely into his eyes, the depth of colour in her green, brown irises drawing him in for several long heartbeats before he remembered that he was supposed to reply.

“Why would anyone want to do that?” He enquired, his nose picking up the small ember of hope that grew in response to his puzzled words as they dampened her all too appetising fear.

“No reason.” She said, looking down at her feet as she kicked one of her shoes against the other, the ratty leather barely holding together from the small impact.

“Good! In that case, you can join me. I’ve been looking for a warrior just like you.” He said, feeling almost giddy with excitement.

“Are you sure you want me? I'm not a very good warrior; I don't have any equipment or training or anything." The woman said, her eyes downcast as if anticipating his rejection.

"That's fine. I’m a mage, so I can do all the heavy lifting, just do what I say, and everything will be alright." Typhoeus said reassuringly.

"Really?" She asked, her fear all but vanishing as the hope blossomed behind her pretty little human eyes.

"Yes really, now stop asking silly questions. Go choose a bounty for us, nothing too far from Rhelea mind as I don't want to be late for my dinner." Typhoeus commanded and smiled as without any further hesitation, his freshly minted warrior set about fulfilling his commands.

Arilla went straight to the wall, frantically looking around for several long minutes as she searched for a suitable bounty before returning with a nervous smile on her face.

"What about this one?" She asked, proffering a small slip of green paper towards him.

Typhoeus glanced at the paper, noting the lack of drawings on it instantly as he pretended to scan the writing that he couldn't read as he 'judged' its suitability.

"That will do nicely, now before we get started just so we’re clear, I am the leader of this team, do you understand?" Typhoeus said, earning emphatic nods from the half-starved warrior. “Good, now Arilla, you’re going to need a weapon...”

"I’ve always liked swords. I know they’re ex-"

"Well I hate them Arilla," Typhoeus said, cutting her off as he tasted her name on his tongue when he said it for the first time. "But don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll be able to find something suitable for your talents. Now let's go murder these creatures. I wish to earn some coins." Typhoeus said, putting an end to their brief conversation.





Typhoeus was rethinking the plan, already Arilla was grating on him, and he was reconsidering her value as his adventuring partner versus a lunchtime snack. She kept bothering him with stupid questions like "How am I going to fight without a weapon?", "How am I going to fight without armour?", "Are you really going on a monster hunt in a slip dress?" and most infuriatingly of all, "Are you sure metallic gold is the best colour for camouflage?". They had picked up a day pass from the guild on their way out with their bounty; being untested level 1's, they weren't deemed worthy of the clay badges that were given to newbie adventurers. Instead, they were given a wooden token and told to be back before sundown, or they would be forced to pay the chalkoi toll to re-enter Rhelea, an amount of coinage that neither of them had about their person.

They departed Rhelea through the eastern gates and walked east along a dirt path that branched off from the Old Road leading to Musama, which followed along the southern banks of the Pollum river. With each step, they walked even further away from the Dragonspines that Typhoeus knew so well, as together he and Arilla, who was now armed with a stout stick, had been walking along a narrow dirt path for well over two hours to get to their destination. It was all uncharted territory for Typhoeus, which excited him, but they were also walking, which was so painfully slow that it very nearly bored him to tears.

The land itself was far flatter than what Typhoeus was used to, the young dragon having no trouble seeing for miles all around him from his vantage point along the ground. Countless acres of farmland seemed to surround the town of Rhelea, especially so close to the wide banks of the Pollum river. Most of it was devoted to grazing livestock, with grains and other vegetables being imported in by barge as the soil was simply too poor to handle the long term strain of arable crops without appropriately high levelled farmers whose skills could do what the soil could not.

According to Arilla, this was largely why food in Rhelea was so expensive, something which had entirely escaped Typhoeus’s notice as he had paid for precisely one meal in his entire life. While the town’s proximity to the confluence of ley lines that ran through the Dragonspines meant faster passive levelling for all when compared to settlements further away, it wasn't nearly enough of a lure to tempt that many farmers into sticking around and braving the near-constant stream of monsters that periodically descended from the mountains and the surrounding foothills. Typically once a farmer reached a high enough level, they would be welcomed elsewhere in the kingdom with open arms, and they were usually relatively quick to abandon the more dangerous farmland surrounding Rhelea in favour of locations where they would be less likely to encounter quite so many monsters.

The fact that the noble dynasty in charge of the lands encompassing Rhelea were borderline negligent in eliminating nearby monster threats only exacerbated this problem and was just one more reason for the local's distaste for the nobility. Something that the Merchants Council, who administered the township, was quick to capitalise on, as every tax hike, food shortage or bad spot of weather was blamed on the governing Traylan dynasty’s apathy towards managing the surrounding lands. Typhoeus finally understood why Arilla had been talking about farmland and Rhelea’s problem with farmer retention for the better part of an hour when they crested a small hill and paused to look down on the dilapidated farmhouse that was apparently mentioned on their bounty notice. As he took in the sights, Typhoeus immediately regretted not bothering to ask Arilla what it was that they were actually hunting as he looked down at the signs of devastation with disgust.

It was a classically built farmhouse on a relatively large plot of land marked out by a small wooden fence in a mild state of disrepair. If Arilla's expertise was to be believed, then the large 'L' shaped wooden building would typically house a farmer and their family, while the large barn would be filled with farming supplies and the occasional animal too valuable to be left out in the fields. Of course, all of this fine architecture was marred by large streaks of dried blood and faeces smeared all over the exterior walls of the buildings in what could best be described as a deranged child’s attempt at fingerprinting.

"So goblins…" Typhoeus said, his distaste evident in his voice.

"Y-yeah, I heard that they're good beginner monsters to hunt," Arilla added, earning herself an annoyed grunt of affirmation from Typhoeus.

By Typhoeus’s reckoning, goblins were the foulest of all the enlightened species by far, the combination of their foul sexual proclivities and their non-existent personal hygiene ensuring that they not only tasted absolutely awful but that you also felt dirty for having put their flesh inside your mouth. The worst thing about them was that they're practically impossible to completely get rid of. You could burn their nests down to the ground, but all it takes is one randy goblin to escape, and a season later, your territory will be overflowing once more with the unwashed little creatures.

Fortunately for them, this particular goblin enclave seemed to be very new. As a result, it was a relatively low levelled one, with none of the goblins that Typhoeus could see swarming about the farmhouse being over level 5. It suggested that they had all been birthed in the past week, likely from the union between a passing goblin scout and a less than willing farm animal. If goblins had one strength, it was that they all possessed a skill from their species class that allowed them to breed true with practically anything and mature to adulthood inside of a single day.

"I can smell them from here," Typhoeus said, breathing through his mouth as he tried his best to filter out the vivid sensations that [Sovereigns Perception] was feeding him.

"Really? You must have a great sense of smell; I can't smell anything." Arilla offered as she fidgeted with her stick, hefting it from one hand to the other like it was a small club.

"I do indeed, although I suspect that you're struggling to smell them as you yourself have a definite odour to you," Typhoeus said casually, causing Arilla's ears to nearly physically droop with embarrassment.

"I-I'm sorry, baths are expensive…." She muttered under her breath.

"I have great hearing as well. Anyway, here's the plan, we’ll go down there, and you’ll keep the goblins off us with your stick, and I'll kill them with my magic as fast as my mana allows." Typhoeus declared.

"That's your plan? That is not a plan! It's little more than a vague idea of how to fight!" Arilla exclaimed loudly in a growing panic.

“Don’t get so worked up; they’re goblins, you said it yourself ‘they’re good beginner monsters to hunt’.” He said calmly, imitating her pattern of speech as she looked at him with mounting dismay.

“Okay, I know that I said that, but there’s over a dozen of them, and all I have is a stick.”

“It’s a very nice stick.”

“Typh...”

“It will be fine; I told you I have magic. They’re what? Three? Four hundred feet away? I can hit a goblin from here, and by the time they close the gap, I’ll have whittled them down a fair bit.”

“I’m not sure….”

"Oh no, they heard you," Typhoeus said unconvincingly as he fired off a particularly loud and flashy manabolt towards the farmhouse.

His spell flew in a tight arc across the three hundred or so feet separating the two adventurers at the top of the low hill from his intended target in a fraction of a heartbeat. The condensed chunk of mana impacting the totally oblivious goblin who was busy defecating in a flower pot with a loud thunderclap, splashing its organs across the sparsely populated grass as the creatures little green abdomen was ripped open by the force of his spell.

Arilla looked at Typhoeus in frozen horror as the dozen or so remaining goblins who were previously running amok instead turned as one and started sprinting uphill towards the pair, stolen farm equipment held high above their heads as they screamed their warbling war cries.

The goblins themselves were small creatures who looked uncomfortably close to a group of particular feral children. Their exposed skin was a sickly shade of green reminiscent of the colour of the moon, but the sheer quantity of filth that typically covered their bodies gave them a sort of patchwork camouflage consisting of dull reds, browns and greens that did a surprisingly good job of allowing them to blend into heavily forested areas. For a species that rarely, if ever made it to 4 feet tall, their bodies were lanky, with long claws at the ends of each of their spindly limbs and an oversized watermelon shaped head. Individually they were not the fearsome alpha predators that nightmares were made of, but as they opened their mouths to scream their rage, they displayed multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth along with their cruel intentions, and Typhoeus almost felt a small pang of pity for Arilla.

"You did that on purpose!" Arilla shrieked, clutching her stick close to her chest as she radiated fear rather than the confident battle fury that Typhoeus was hoping to eventually instil in his pet warrior.

"Are you sure you should be focusing on me?" Typhoeus asked as he flung another manabolt at a charging goblin, this time around tearing a significant chunk of flesh out of the creature's torso whose screams were cut short as it collapsed to the ground in a rapidly growing pool of blood.

Arilla turned and faced the oncoming goblin wave with a trembling lip; she planted her feet in something approximating a fighting stance as she readied her little stick. It was a cute effort, but it would be nowhere near enough to save her. While the goblins were weak in every sense of the word, there were a lot of them, and Arilla's malnourished body was already shaking, and not just from fear but from the exertions of a mere two-hour walk. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion to Typhoeus that the goblins would handily tear her apart without his direct intervention. Fortunately for her, Typhoeus fully intended to intervene, and as a sovereign dragon, he knew that he could kill all of the goblins with a wet fart. Unfortunately, Typhoeus was pretending to be Typh, the level 1 mage, and so he had to at least pretend to struggle in the face of so many vicious creatures.

Typhoeus counted to three in his head before deciding to kill another goblin, this time ripping open a slightly smaller hole in its body as he tried to be more frugal with his mana use. ‘Typh’ was supposed to have somewhere between 10 and 80 mana depending on the specifics of how she distributed her stats, the specific mage class she had chosen and her class skills. Given the capabilities of a new spellcaster, there was only so much that she was supposed to be able to do with such a limited mana supply.

Once again, his mental count reached three, and so another goblin died violently in a flash of golden light. He reset his count again as he dispassionately watched Arilla, who had in a moment of stupid bravery decided to charge down the small hill to meet the goblins in battle. With her superior size and gravity on her side, she deftly clubbed the leading goblin over the head, dazing the creature and causing it to drop the farming hoe that it had readied as an improvised spear. She went to finish it off but had to desperately parry, backpedalling frantically as two more goblins arrived, swinging a rake and a scythe at her, respectively.

The leading goblin recovered, and Arilla's bad situation was suddenly looking a lot worse when Typhoeus's count hit three, and he decided to spend a single point of mana to kill the scythe wielding goblin with a well-timed manabolt. As the goblin’s chest exploded in a fountain of gore, Arilla took advantage of the confusion and managed to finish off the two goblins attacking her with a wide sweep of her branch, her strike empowered with what was likely a warrior class skill of some sort.

"Can't you cast those any faster?" Arilla yelled back breathlessly at Typhoeus, who was trying his best to look a little less relaxed.

"I'm casting them as fast as I can." Typhoeus lied. "Just try to keep them busy!"

Arilla was possibly about to yell something a bit more critical when she was rudely interrupted by two more of the green skinned creatures, one of whom jumped on her back and seemed more intent on pulling her hair than causing any actual injury, while the other was more than happy to try and savage the young warrior with what looked like a well-notched kitchen knife.

The goblins, while stupid, were smart enough to recognise that Typhoeus was the biggest threat on the field, the mage having torn through their numbers with his lazily cast manabolts. As such, four of them had peeled off from the herd rushing to attack Arilla and were instead racing towards him. He killed one, popping its head like an overripe grape reducing the group charging him down to three before doing what any normal level 1 mage would do in his position.

Typhoeus turned on his heels and ran away from the onrushing goblins as he sprinted towards Arilla in a wide circle, easily outpacing them as he led the scrambling creatures back towards the beleaguered warrior. He wasn't entirely heartless; while running towards her, Typhoeus quickly chained together an empowerment spell, buffing Arilla's strength, dexterity and vitality by a static 20 points or so, hoping that the small boost could be reasonably explained away as some sort of adrenaline high.

Almost immediately, the young warrior pivoted from a hasty dodge, turning her hips with her swing as she smashed her stick into a goblins head so hard that the wooden branch exploded on impact, spraying what passed for the creature’s brains all over the place amidst a shower of sharp splinters. Before its corpse could even hit the ground, she rolled along the dirt, dodging stabs and dislodging the goblin on her back as she swept up the fallen scythe and spun it around in a single fluid motion decapitating the two remaining goblins swarming her.

The three chasing Typhoeus took one long look at the pile of goblin corpses surrounding Arilla and then did the sensible thing by choosing to run away. Their screams of rage turning into those of panic as they were joined by a handful more of their kind as they sprinted past the farmhouse and carried on running through the abandoned fields and out of sight while Typhoeus lobbed a few more manabolts at them as they made their getaway.

"That wasn't so hard," Typhoeus said, reviewing his System prompts as he slowly sauntered down the hill and towards the farmhouse.
*Congratulations on defeating a level 2 Feral Goblin. Experience is awarded.*

*Congratulations on defeating a level 2 Feral Goblin. Experience is awarded.*

…

*Congratulations on defeating a level 3 Feral Goblin. Experience is awarded.*


“Shouldn’t we go after them? What if they go after a town?” Arilla asked, sounding more than a little tired as the magical backlash from having such inflated stats left her feeling considerably weakened.

“Aren’t there patrols for that sort of thing? Besides, I’m sure any town that can be overwhelmed by a handful of goblins has bigger problems.” He said, dismissing her concerns with a casual wave of his hand.

“I suppose you’re right; I guess I’m in no hurry to fight again today. I feel like I’m about to keel over.” She said, her breath heavy as she sat down on the gore streaked ground.

“Are you sure? I thought it was pretty easy to be honest.” He said honestly, having found the light exercise to be a relatively refreshing end to their long walk.

"I nearly died!" Arilla exclaimed, a series of small scratches on her cheek and arms, not to mention some mud in her hair, the only outward signs that she had very nearly been overwhelmed in combat.

"Don't be so dramatic; you’re fine, better than fine really you levelled up. And most of those cuts will heal without a scar." Typhoeus said as the now level 2 warrior stood up and joined him.

"I did? I did! Thank you so much! So uhm... What are we doing now? The notice was to drive off the goblins, and we've done that." Arilla asked; her mood significantly improved as she reviewed her own System prompts, the level up doing wonders for whatever burgeoning resentment she may have held towards Typhoeus.

"I'm hungry, and there's bound to be some food left in the place that the goblins haven't gotten to yet," Typhoeus said.

"Isn't that stealing?" Arilla asked.

"Yes."

"Oh, okay."