Chapter 162: Hunt

AN: Extra-long chapter!

We checked out of the town relatively easily. The guards even gave us a little ticket for adventurers on jobs saying that, if we came back within a week, we wouldn’t have to check in the normal way—we could use a smaller side-entrance instead to skip any lines that happened to form. Not that I was worried we’d get stuck in line; it was around eight at night by now, so I highly doubted there’d be some boom in tourism suddenly.

Once we were outside the walls, I closed my eyes and attempted to contact Ainash, but I was having trouble making that connection between her over such a long distance. I effectively had to re-connect what I was used to having already available.

“Just told Ainash we came out,” Erani said.

I opened my eyes to see her looking at me. “Oh, nice. I was just trying to, having some trouble.”

“Yeah, took me a second to figure it out. Here, let me show you while we walk to where we’ll meet.”

“Father!” I felt a message coming through to me from Ainash, this one much stronger than the ones I’d received when trying to contact her before. Glancing around, I looked for the messenger, who was obviously close, if it was this clear.

We’d moved out further from the walls while we waited for Ainash to find us, waiting near a road intersection so she could locate us more easily.

“Do you see us?” I asked.

“Yes! Yes! You are on the road! Standing next to mother!”

“Well, yeah, that’s not exactly a unique circumstance,” I laughed. “Where are you?”

“Am right…”

I looked around, and suddenly found something tackling me from behind.

“Here!”

I stumbled forward, keeping myself up with the help of Expedite, and laughed, turning around to see Ainash hugging my back tightly. I shifted so I was fully facing her, then brought my arms around to hug her, too. “Hey, kiddo. How’d you sneak up on me so well?”

“My skin is grass color, so could look like grass!”

“Ah, nice. That’s smart.”

“Did you make any friends while you were out here?” Erani asked, repeating her messages aloud so I could follow along in the conversation—same as we always did.

“Did not meet any Humans, but saw many animals. They are strange, have never seen these types of animals before.”

“Yes, we’re pretty far from home. I’m sure we’ll see lots of things we don’t recognize.”

“It’s good to see you again,” I said.

“Feels like it has been forever and ever!”

I laughed. “It’s not even been an hour. But, yeah. I definitely agree. We’re gonna get you into the city as soon as possible.”

“So we are killing monsters?”

“Yeah. Hopefully they aren’t the ones you’ve been making friends with.”

“Oh, it is okay. Can kill friend monsters.”

“You…can?”

“Yes! Sometimes friends kill each other. If monster friend was hungry, and I was weak, friend would kill me, too. Humans are very weird because they do not kill friends. That is what family is for. Do not kill family, but can kill friends. It is like…is like all Humans are family. Very weird.”

“Huh.” I looked over at Erani, and we shared a glance that basically amounted to ‘we can talk about that with her later.’

“Anyway,” Erani said, “what we’re looking for are these monsters called Gloomspurs. Arlan’s seen them before, so he can tell you what they look like, and then maybe you can lead us to where you might have seen them? We need some money so we can—”

“What is ‘money?’”

“Um, I can probably explain that while we’re on the way to the Gloomspurs.”

“Okay!”

It got to be dark out as we walked out into the hilly plains of the area surrounding the town. We had to move pretty far out from the town to get away from the farmland, so the sun had some time to disappear behind the horizon as we traveled.

“Monsters are kind of mean, would not stop hurting me with poison!” Ainash said. “I think they count as mean guys.”

“Well, as long as they aren’t bad guys,” I chuckled. “I don’t think we need any monster genocides being planned.”

“You get ‘money’ thing for every monster killed, correct? Could kill them all anyway while you are in Human territory, that way I give you teeth tomorrow and you get lots of money thing.”

“...Huh.” I looked over at Erani. “That doesn’t sound like too bad a plan.”

“Let’s put a pin in it,” she said. “We’re not sure how everything works, yet, so we should try to familiarize ourselves with this place before trying to pull anything like that.”

“If it’s an open bounty, that means there are no overhunting laws, right? I can’t imagine there’d be anything wrong with it.”

“Still, I don’t want to get into any trouble. Probably a good idea to run by the guild before going on any large hunts like this one just to make sure we aren’t stepping on any toes. Giving Ainash an open license to kill as much as she wants without supervision is just asking for trouble. Not to mention…” she glanced over at Ainash, then looked back at me. “She can be a bit…overzealous, at times. Again, no supervision means no protection in case there’s trouble.”

I pursed my lips. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair.”

“So no killing monsters?”

“Not while we’re not with you. At least, not for now. Just don’t go out hunting on purpose; it’s fine to fight in self-defense, obviously. But if there’s an occasion like that, you should let us know anyway.”

“Okay!”

“Anyway, you said you thought you saw some of those monsters we’re looking for around here, right?”

“Yes. Were wandering around and spreading gunk mist all over.”

“Gunk mist? You mean that smoke they breathe out?”

“Yes, they put it everywhere! Kill all grass all around and leave purple gunk behind.”

I frowned. Left it behind? I didn’t remember seeing the one I’d encountered leave anything behind. It just killed some of the grass. “Do you mind showing me where, exactly, that gunk that they left behind is?”

“Okay!”

Ainash led us over off the road and into a field. I was honestly really proud of her sense of direction—I knew her life as a Nymph would naturally lead her to be much more comfortable navigating the wilderness, but I’d have gotten completely lost walking along this featureless road in the featureless plains and lose any memory of exactly where I’d seen a pack of random monsters. Much less would I be able to lead someone to an exact location where I saw them breathe out on the grass.

As we walked out into the fields, up and down the gradual hills, we soon came to a point where, as Ainash had said, all the grass was dead. A big patch of gray. But…

“There’s no purple here.” I looked over the field. “You said the gunk was purple?”

“Um…” Ainash looked around, frowning. “Was here! Definitely was here.”

“Erani, do you know anything about this?” I asked, stepping forward and examining the grass. There was no hint of any kind of ‘gunk’ or purple coloring.

“No, no. Never heard of Gloomspurs, either. I know Classes, but you probably know more about monsters than I do. I certainly don’t know anything about stuff from the empire.”

“Well, I guess the gunk just goes away after some time,” I shrugged.

“Mhm.” Erani bent down and looked at the patch of dead grass. “Looks like they left a trail. Think we could follow it?”

Sure enough, the trail led us straight to a pack of Gloomspurs, meandering across the fields, breathing their poison gas everywhere and leaving a lazy trail of destruction behind them.

I could tell why the town wanted them gone so badly now, at least. With the amount of smoke they were exhaling, even this single pack could deal significant damage to the landscape. And if they wandered into farmland…that could end up as quite a bit of damage to the economy, too. It felt like highway robbery for them to pay us enough for a piece of bread to kill something that could destroy an entire wheat field. But, well, that was what happened when there were so many adventurers to fit the demand.

Looking out into the pack, I counted three of the things. No, four, counting a baby one I hadn’t seen at first. We needed twenty to be able to afford a night at the inn. And that wasn’t counting expenses for food, clothes, everything we’d need to survive aside from housing.

I looked over at Erani and Ainash. “Well, let’s get hunting.”

You have offered moderate contribution toward the slaying of Level 7 Gloomspur.

You have earned 19 XP. Your XP is 512.

Level 32 Draconiad has offered moderate contribution toward the slaying of Level 7 Gloomspur.

Due to having a Bond with Draconiad, you have earned 1 XP. Your XP is 513.

“That’s the last of this pack,” I said as the final body fell before me. I’d used a couple Sanguine Bonds in the process of taking them out—my Health was full, but I was always spending Stamina to move around, so the incidental restoration there was nice—and in the process, it’d Ranked up. I’d forgotten that my Soft Cap was at 11 by now, so when I used the Spell Crystal to push the Spell up to Rank 10, I actually still had one more Rank I could earn without having to push past. Unexpected, but the gains were very nice to see.

Threshold reached. Sanguine Bond XP has reached 355.

Sanguine Bond Rank has increased to 11.

Due to Sanguine Bond Rank reaching 11, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 298 to 305

Health Drain: From 6.52 to 6.85

Stamina Drain: From 8.15 to 8.56

Mana Drain: From 9.78 to 10.3

Health Regeneration: From 1.63 to 1.71

Stamina Regeneration: From 3.27 to 3.43

Mana Regeneration: From 4.88 to 5.12

Erani looked around. “How do we get the teeth?”

“I will do it!” Ainash bent down and, using a thorn from her whip, not-so-neatly poked and stabbed the left fang from its socket in the first corpse’s mouth.

“I guess that does it,” I muttered, looking at the bloody display. Then I turned to Erani. “Well, we got four out of twenty.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “Just sixteen to go. And it’s only…already nighttime.”

“Yeah. I’m thinking we’re going to be working pretty late.”

“Think if we buy it past midnight, they’ll let the payment count for the next night too?”

I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

Hours passed as we continued to hunt down packs of Gloomspurs. They seemed to travel in packs of three or four, but we got lucky once with a pack of five. Eventually, as the moon rose into the sky and we wandered on and on in the dark wilds, we got to a certain point.

You have offered moderate contribution toward the slaying of Level 5 Gloomspur.

You have earned 12 XP. Your XP is 742.

Level 32 Draconiad has offered moderate contribution toward the slaying of Level 7 Gloomspur.

Due to having a Bond with Draconiad, you have earned 1 XP. Your XP is 743.

“One left,” I sighed. “And…no more in this pack.”

“Looks like we’ll be looking for another group. Then we’ll be good. Guess we’ll end up having enough for a couple pieces of bread, after all.” Erani laughed, but I could tell she was exhausted, same as I was.

At this point, Erani had shut off Distortion Strike. Her Mana/Minute wasn’t enough to keep up with it yet, so she had to take breaks from it at times. I, of course, still had on Dark Plate, but that was because I was able to. We were constantly on-guard to have her reactivate the Spell the moment we saw someone, though, so even if someone came up to us, ideally we’d have her disguised by the time they got a good look. And there still wasn’t technically any public info out on us that we knew of, so we weren’t at much risk for now.

“I just hope it doesn’t take another hour to find this next group, like it did the last one,” I muttered. “Only so much I can take before I just say ‘fuck it’ and decide we should spend the night out here.”

“I am way too hungry to be okay with that,” Erani said. “And I really, really don’t want to eat raw monster meat again.”

“Agreed,” I nodded, looking at her drained face backed by the night sky. Then I smiled. “Hey, you look pretty cute with bags under your eyes.”

She laughed. “I do not. Don’t look at me.”

“Fine, fine,” I turned away, making a show of my compliance, but then I paused, mid-way through my turn.

“What?”

“There’s another.”

“Another?”

“Another pack,” I smiled, looking out across the fields. Cresting a hill was a pack of four more Gloomspurs. “Today’s our lucky day, huh?”

“Lucky day,” Erani rolled her eyes. “More like it makes up for our awful luck earlier.”

“Well, it’s almost tomorrow now, so we’re close to it counting separately. Maybe tomorrow’s our lucky day.”

She chuckled. “I guess we’ll just have to see.”

“Anyway, let’s go kill those things.”

“Seconded,” Erani nodded and walked along with me.

“Yay!” Ainash said. “More fighting!”

We began moving over to the new pack that was standing around at the top of the hill. We’d realized, after a few encounters, that the things were pretty docile by nature. So we didn’t actually need to exercise much caution when approaching, since chances were they wouldn’t even try running off. And even if they did, we always had my debuffing Spells.

So we walked up, I prepared to start casting, and—

“Die, monster!” A voice screamed from my left, and I turned to see a man with a massive broadsword running straight at me.

“Fuck!” I stepped back, just barely dodging the strike. Instantly, I activated Gravity Well on my attacker, and I could see Erani beside me activate Distortion Strike to hide her appearance.

But despite the increased gravity, the man picked up the gigantic hunk of steel with both hands and hefted it again, looking at me with rage. Then he opened his mouth and screamed charging at me again.

I hit him with Crippling Chill, and he kept running. Level 15 Berserker, the notification said. So I raised my hand and shot him with a Ray of Frost. He kept coming at me.

“Hey! I’m Human!” I shouted.

He didn’t stop. With a grunt of exertion, he brought the sword down and I leapt to the side, once again barely avoiding getting hit. I was sure I could survive a landed strike or two, but I couldn’t afford him knowing my Class.

“Hey!” I shouted again. “Please!”

He turned to me with a crazed expression.

“Father! Is this bad guy? Should I attack?”

“Um…” I couldn’t decide what to say. Was I going to have to kill this man? “Just try to restrain him for now!”

Instantly, Ainash leapt into action, charging at him. He raised his sword to deflect one whip strike, but then a Firebolt from Erani sent him stumbling back. When the smoke cleared, he was charging straight at her, apparently having switched targets from me to her. He swung his long blade and just barely grazed her arm with it, but Angelic Shield protected her from damage, and before he could swing again, Ainash rushed in and wrapped her whip around his neck, forcing him to the ground in one swift motion.

“Hey!” A voice came out from afar. I looked over and saw a woman, alongside a whole group of people, running up to us. “That’s our guy! Let him go!”

“He was attacking me!” I yelled back. “Come get him under control.”

“Let him go!” She yelled again.

“He’s a Berserker, right?! So he’s under the effects of Berserk. If we let him go, he’ll just attack again. I’m not doing that until you get him under control.”

“Ugh. Fine.” She ran faster in her approach, waving a hand to usher the other closer, as well.

After a few seconds, the man still struggling to reach me but being restrained by the combined forces of Ainash and Erani, the group came over to us. Only then did I tell Ainash to let him go, and she did, leaving visible marks where the thorned whip had been poking him.

The woman nodded at a couple people, who knelt to attend to the wounded man, and then walked up to me. “What the hell was that?”

I looked at her. “What in the hells was that? I should be asking you the same thing. Some man just attacked me out of nowhere—it’s you who needs to be doing the explaining, here.”

She stared at me for a moment, then shook her head. “I expect compensation.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Compensation?”

“Yes. For harming an innocent man.”

Erani walked up. “He wasn’t innocent. He attacked us first. It’s basic self defense. We only did what we had to in order to keep ourselves safe.”

A man walked over to us, splitting off from the main group of easily over a dozen people to stand next to the woman, facing me. “I dunno. I think you’re lucky to get off with just paying us our due.”

“How in the bottom hell do you think you’re in the legal right here?” Erani scoffed. “In fact, I’m almost certain that what just happened here could easily be classified as attempted murder, especially since you didn’t know our Levels. If we were Unclassed—or even just low-Level—we’d be dead where we stand.”

“I’m just sayin’.” He nodded his head, and a couple other people walked up to us. “There’re a lot of people on our side of this. You’re lucky we decided not to attack right away. ‘Bout fifteen on three, I think this’d go pretty poorly for you, huh?”

“Father,” Ainash said, looking at me nervously, “am feeling these people wanting to hurt us.”

“...Oh.” I looked around us. Every person in the crowd of fifteen was staring straight at me. “This is…a mugging?”