Shit. She took a step back. Shit shit shit. Her heart sank as she turned away to race towards the relative safety of the Hunter’s Den. Stranded in the Dead Fields or otherwise, she sure as hells wasn’t ready to take on another dungeon, not after how the last one went. She swallowed.
Maybe Drathis would know more, or Preston would have another idea for a way through the towering mountains. Eve could only hope so.
She didn’t know how long they could survive in the Dead Fields or if there was an alternate path south or even how strong the dungeon might’ve been, but at least her little scouting trip had provided one piece of crucial, if heartbreaking, information.
They weren’t out of the woods yet.
CHAPTER FIVE
To the Grindstone
“YOU DID WHAT?”
“Shhh.” Eve pressed a finger to her mouth, jerking her head towards the still-slumbering Wes.
Preston rolled his eyes. “You and I both know he’ll sleep through a stampede. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking Drathis stank up the cave with pelsid slime and I wanted to go looking for this pass you mentioned.”
“Without us,” Preston added. “You could’ve gotten killed.”
“I’m an adventurer, Preston,” she snapped. “Getting killed is always on the table. Having you and Wes along wouldn’t have helped if a level two hundred decided I looked tasty.” Eve stopped short of saying they would’ve slowed her down. While true in the most literal of senses, Preston didn’t deserve to hear that.
He caught on to her reasoning, nonetheless. “And without us you have a better chance of escaping.”
She nodded.
“Okay.” Preston shrugged and shook his head, visibly less than happy with the exchange. “What did you find?”
“There’s a pass there alright.”
The healer’s face lit up. “That’s great! We can head out as soon as Wes wakes up.”
Eve held up a hand. “One problem. There was a pass there. Or—well—there still is, but it’s a dungeon now. The Fallen Pass.”
Preston furrowed his brow. “Can we challenge it?”
“The Fallen Pass? Not unless ye’d like to die.” Drathis looked up from his stone-carving to chime in.
Eve didn’t question why the giant rat chose to spend his time adding to his growing collection of tiny stone animals. Maybe he’d once had a child to play with such toys; the last thing Eve wanted to do was bring up such memories. “What do you know about it?” she asked instead.
“It’s the trellac’s roost.”
The Striker continued, “What’s a trellac? Can we sneak past it?”
“If ye were a plant,” Drathis answered. “The trellac’s no ordinary monster; the beast hunts with her mind. One whiff o’ the thoughts in your head and she’ll be faster than a griffin on somebody else’s kill.” He spat.
“What about fighting it?” Preston suggested. “We have firepower to spare.”
Drathis jerked a clawed finger toward Wes. “Maybe if ye had three o’ him.”
Eve briefly choked at the idea of dealing with three Weses. Dear gods, no.
Drathis continued, “Like ye are? I’d warn ye away, but ye did say getting killed was on the table.”
“No, that’s not what I—I didn’t mean on purpose, I meant—” Eve exhaled. “Is there another pass?”
“Not unless ye can make it to the Broken Marsh.”
“That’s a no,” Preston said. “That’d be back the way we came, plus another month’s walk. Without Drathis’s survival skills and the supplies in this cave, our food stores wouldn’t last a week. We’d starve.”
“So it’s trellac or bust,” Eve thought aloud. “We can’t sneak past it, and we can’t fight it unless we find help or get stronger.”
Preston gave her a sideways glance. “What are you planning?”
A sly grin crossed her face. “Well, we did come north in the first place to level up. Just because we’re stuck further north than we intended doesn’t mean we have to stop.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Oh, but she was. “I’m sure Drathis can find us some things to kill, and with how high-level everything out here is…”
Preston’s expression went flat. “You just want to hit tier four.”
Eve’s smile widened. “I just want to make sure we all get home safely. If I just… happen to reach tier 4 in the process, all the better.”
Preston sighed, gently running a hand along Reginald’s back where the drake rested around his neck. Already the hatchling had outgrown his old roost in the healer’s hair. “Alright,” he finally said, “but on one condition.”
She cocked an eyebrow.
“Reginald gets a cut of the exp.”
Eve looked back and forth between the glorified veterinarian and his foot-and-a-half-long pet drake before extending an open hand.
“We have a deal.”
* * *
“This is the worst.” Wes tugged at the strip of fabric that covered his mouth and nose. “I can’t believe this is our best option.”
Eve rolled her eyes, her own face free of a former pant-leg soaked in Drathis’s slime mixture. Not being human had its perks. “The air is literally poison, Wes. You can handle a bit of stinky cloth.”
“I liked my fire solution better.”
Preston blinked. “You mean the one that forced you to stay awake for a week straight?”
Four days had passed since Eve’s little scouting trip, most of which she’d spent cooped up in Drathis’s cave while Wes slept. She hadn’t known it was possible to sleep that long, but apparently taking stamina potions to stay awake really wasn’t great for one’s health.
“I’d just need to keep it up long enough to hunt a bit and return to the cave,” the mage reasoned.
“No.” The sharpness in Eve’s tone put an end to Wes’s protest. “If we’re gonna be fighting, you can’t be distracted. Wasting focus on keeping the air clean could get us killed.”
“We’re here.” Drathis pointed.
The thing was tall.
A single, thin appendage loomed ahead of them, whatever body it supported obscured in the mist above. The leg itself was a foot thick, giving it a strongly unstable, spindly appearance as it must’ve been at least twenty feet long. The dark gray and wrinkled skin came to an end at a thin hoof which sank somewhat into the dry earth.
If Eve squinted, she could just make out the shapes of three more such legs in the fog. “What is this thing?” She paused. “Oh. Right. Appraise.”
Level ?? Skyswallower
Preston took a step back.
“That’s not an intimidating name at all,” Wes commented.
“There’s tiny creatures,” Drathis said, bringing two claws together to demonstrate, “living in the mist. They feed off the poison, and the skyswallowers feed off them.”
Eve instinctively covered her exposed mouth, stomach churning at the idea of breathing in a living creature. Then again, she hadn’t noticed anything thus far, and anything she had inhaled would’ve just turned to Mana. She removed her hand, noticing the air felt somehow grittier since hearing Drathis’s explanation. Eve shuddered.
“Are they dangerous?” Preston asked.
“Everything’s dangerous if you handle it wrong,” the rat answered. “The trellac herself wouldn’t take a herd o’ swallowers head on.”
Eve opened her mouth to protest Drathis’s chosen nickname for the skyswallowers before deciding the better of it. Drawing attention to it would just give Wes another opportunity to come up with a tasteless joke. She could practically hear him wrack his brain for ideas. “There’s a herd?”
“Aye.” Drathis nodded. “Must be a couple hundred in this one, spread out o’ course.”
Preston’s eyes widened. “How can you tell?”
The Scavenger shrugged. “Listen. They talk to each other.”
Eve strained, cupping a hand to her ear. Sure enough, a chorus of what co
uld only be described as deep, unnerving groans echoed through the sky. “So how do we fight one without fighting the herd?”
“They’ll follow the food,” Drathis said, “and the food are drawn to light.”
Three sets of eyes turned to stare at Wes as he muttered to himself.
“Sounds like a girl I once knew? No, that’s not it. You named them after your mother? No, too mean.”
Preston cleared his throat.
Wes shook his head, redirecting his thoughts from the array of ‘swallower’ jokes. “Sorry, what?”
Eve sighed. “We need a light to lure one of these away from the herd.”
Wes spun an open hand with a flourish, conjuring a simple flame in his palm. It glowed purple under the influence of the mists. “A light, you say?” He paused, eyes drifting over the Mana lines along Eve’s neck. “What about you?”
Drathis coughed, raising a claw to the air. “Up there. They don’t eat with their shins.”
“Right. Just—um—tell me where.”
Directing Wes’s flame to the right location proved a somewhat more difficult task than Eve had expected. Between watching their quarry’s knees to determine which direction it actually faced, figuring out the right distance to catch its attention and not that of its herdmates, as well as maintaining—and restricting—the small blaze without being able to actually see it, Wes had his work cut out for him.
After an afternoon of traipsing back and forth with either too many or too few skyswallowers in tow—and several minutes spent running from an angry beast Wes accidentally singed—the Disciple successfully lured his first target.
They walked for nearly half an hour before Eve turned to their rodent guide. “Is this far enough?”
Drathis shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
The words didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but Eve had to admit the truth to them. It wasn’t like they had a way to test it. She looked up and down the four towering legs before her. “So how do we take it down?”
“Go for the legs?” Preston offered. “You’re the one with a mace.”
“I could burn it,” Wes said. “I’ve already got a flame in front of it.”
“I’d rather get it to the ground first,” Eve countered. “If we don’t immobilize it with the first hit, it’ll run back to its herd.” She drew her morningstar. “Any arguments?”
The men both shook their heads.
“Alright. Here goes nothing.”
Eve dumped two hundred Mana per second into Mana Rush, ballooning her Strength to well over three thousand. She swung. A hideous crack echoed through the mist as the steel weight of her mace crashed into the creature’s shin.
It bounced off.
Eve’s eyebrows shot up as she clenched to control the rebound. She’d known this thing was high-level, but truth be told she’d still expected the mace to pass right through. Everything else she’d fought had crumpled before it.
The skyswallower bellowed in pain, rearing back to take its weight off the wounded limb.
At least she’d wounded it. Eve pulled back for another strike, trying to choose which leg would make the best target, when the creature surprised her for the second time.
The skyswallower ran away.
Eve followed.
Though the thing’s clumsy, three-legged step slowed it down, the incredible length of its stride more than made up for its injury.
Eve Charged! Her Mana ticked down with every step as Mana Rush burned through it. She raced on.
Eve realized her first problem as she came up alongside the fleeing skyswallower: Its legs were moving targets. The haphazard way it ran to overcome the uselessness of its damaged limb added just enough chaos to its motion to stump the intrepid hunter. Eve wasted precious seconds watching it move.
It was her Mana bar, in the end, that forced her into action. Only a thousand left. Only a few more seconds on Mana Rush’s minimum duration.
She pulled back her mace, carefully tracking the motion of her quarry’s rear leg. She prayed.
Eve canceled her abilities the moment her weapon struck true.
Absent her temporary Strength, her fingers failed to keep a grip on the sturdy handle as it rebounded. The mace wrenched itself from her hands, spinning back to land with a thud on loose earth.
Another pained groan rang out, pulling Eve’s attention back to the creature above her. She looked up just in time to see the dark shape plummeting towards her.
She Jetted back.
The abruptness of the ability use sent her tumbling to the ground, but she’d take a bit of dirt over being crushed by a monster any day.
Eve panted as she righted herself, immediately thankful she’d both measured out and canceled her Mana Rush when she had. A quick status check confirmed the Jet had dropped her reserves into the double digits. She gulped.
Hurried footfalls rang out behind her, coming to an end as her companions caught up. Wes and Preston both began casting at once, the former to engulf the disabled skyswallower in flame and the latter to send a rush of golden light through Eve.
She shivered as Ayla forgave her for the stupidity to hunt a creature so beyond her level, as if she’d had a choice. The Striker scowled at the goddess’s ever-condescending mercy. Hells, she didn’t even need healing. The beast never hit her.
Eve dismissed that thought as she noticed a trickle of Mana return to her pool. “You didn’t tell me you could restore Mana.”
Preston faltered. “I… can’t.”
Eve shrugged. “Must be a manaheart thing. I was full health, so it absorbed the Mana from your spell.”
The Caretaker paused. “You really shouldn’t be able to do that. That’s not how spells wor—”
“Anyway,” she cut him off, pushing herself to her feet, “let’s go make sure this thing is dead.”
Enshrouded as it was in Wes’s inferno, the skyswallower’s cries had long since ceased. Still, it writhed about on the dead topsoil, struggling and failing to douse the flames. The smell was the worst part, clinging to her nose in a malicious combination of cooked meat and burning sulfur.
For a moment, Eve wished Wes hadn’t been so quick to set the thing alight, if only so she could’ve gotten a better look at its actual body before reducing it to ash. Ah well, she thought, I can always examine the next one. She was glad Wes had been there—she sure as hells hadn’t had the Mana left over to finish the beast off. Without his help, it might’ve summoned its herd before Eve could’ve recovered enough for a lethal blow.
It took another three minutes for the notification to finally appear.
You have defeated Level 89 Skyswallower: +11040 exp!
If she’d been drinking tea, Eve might’ve spat it out in comically overdramatic fashion. As it was, she simply cursed. “Ayla’s tits, that’s a lot.”
“Okay,” Preston admitted, his eyes blue with his own status screen, “maybe hunting here really was a good idea.”
Eve cracked her knuckles, smiling wide and breathing deep to metabolize more of the toxic mists into Mana. “Alright then,” she said. “Who’s ready to start grinding?”
CHAPTER SIX
Kill, Loot, Repeat
THE SKYSWALLOWER HERD proved itself a treasure trove of experience once the gang fell into the rhythm of the hunt. Each kill began with Wes luring a lone beast far enough away for Eve to safely strike.
They tried all manner of methods for stopping their prey from fleeing once Eve landed her first blow, from targeting different legs to sending Reginald in to nip at its ankles to Wes summoning a wall of flame to hold the skyswallower in place, but each time the creature charged through anyway, forcing Eve to give chase.
It was risky business.
If she let her quarry escape, Eve feared it might warn the herd, or worse, return with reinforcements. Her Mana Rush and the danger of accidentally running headlong into the herd—or a rock, which would be just as lethal at such speeds—gave an inherent time limit to the act of landing the
second blow. Eve knew she’d eventually miss.
The key problem the party faced was that Eve’s Mana Rush was the only effective weapon they had against the high-level skyswallowers. Wes’s flames could certainly kill one, but their thick hides burned slowly, leaving plenty of time for escape. The party couldn’t allow a monster to deliver one of Wes’s fires to an area outside his range—who knew how far it could spread without his focused control?
Once Eve brought a target down, Wes finished it off in his fiery way while Preston addressed any injuries. Only once the flames died down did Reginald run in to feast on the charred remains while the party got to work harvesting any useable meat to return to Drathis.
The rat himself, who usually spent his days foraging or crafting supplies from what few beasts he could down himself was perfectly happy to accept the steady stream of food and animal parts the adventurers sent him. They never spoke of it, but Eve considered it their payment for his help.
That said, for all their size, the skyswallowers didn’t have much meat on them. The twenty-foot long spindly legs had some but mostly consisted of skin, bone, and sinew. Their actual bodies weren’t much better.
It took until their third kill for Eve to get a good look at one before Wes set it alight, and she regretted it.
It was hideous.
The creature was seventy percent mouth, a gaping toothless maw that stretched as wide as Eve was tall. The rest of it was confined to about two square feet of space, enough for a series of tightly-packed organs and the powerful muscles that controlled its legs, but not much else. While Reginald was happy enough to devour anything it could, Eve’s party only took what little of the muscle survived Wes’s flames. It wasn’t much.
Their first day’s hunt yielded four kills, just enough for Eve to hit level forty-one. The fifty percent Mana-cost reduction on Jet was certainly a welcome change, but the difference was less than two levels’ worth of Mana.
The more she leveled, the more Eve appreciated just how much Mana Density she was wracking up. With the way her abilities—especially Mana Rush—scaled, each point was worth a staggering amount of Strength.
This Class is Bonkers! (This Trilogy is Broken (A Comedy Litrpg Adventure) Book 2) Page 4
