Fifty-three trolls, ogres, and cyclopes had walked into Blackwood never to leave, with half as many other large monsters that we weren’t trying to target. Five times as many smaller predators had gone the same way or been captured. Each day we travelled farther and farther into the forest, luring out more and more. We were now baiting almost a mile inside the giant’s territory.
I’d gained a truly insane amount of experience, enough to get me to level 100 five times over. I could now safely say my system worked. I wasn’t afraid of something going wrong. I wasn’t afraid of being unable to handle a situation, despite the danger of some of the new threats.
However, I was exhausted. Heavy bags hung under my eyes. I hadn’t been getting more than two or three hours of sleep since we’d started. The influx of monsters meant there were always traps to repair and reset, live monsters to move, and dead monsters to clean up. Five people weren’t enough for all the work we had to do and the others didn’t have my endurance or constitution. They’d helped as much as they could and were all suffering from lack of sleep, but I was the one left working by myself when everyone was too exhausted to keep going. Tired people made mistakes—and we were all tired.
We’d tried not baiting the forest to have a night off but the giant’s territory was now too close. Monsters were coming out even without being baited. So we’d decided to push through and keep going until it finally showed.
Barely half an hour ago, 50 komododiles that we hadn’t baited had come running out of the forest of their own accord. They looked like crocodiles with longer legs. The smallest were the size of large pigs. The group of monsters was split in two, each led by a komododile so large that it showed that the smallest ones were little older than hatchlings. The two parents easily weighed more than some larger breeds of whale. Aside from the giant, I had never seen anything so big.
But from what I had read, their threat range was only mid, barely more than an ogre. They relied on their size and thick hide for survival, overpowering their prey with raw strength rather than complex hunting skills. Each one led a group of their children into one of the automated barns along the border, following the scent of goat and chicken. Nothing came out.
Salem was keeping me informed of everyone’s status.
The situation was the same up and down the tree line. Tonight, everyone was dealing with some sort of monster, and most had more than one or two. We’d finally reached the real monsters, not just the predators that stayed near the edge.
Salem appeared, sprinting out of nowhere, skidding to a halt in front of me. “The main trapdoor on your southern barn has been disabled. The adult komododile’s body was long enough to prevent it from spinning and it walked right over the top. It triggered the first swinging axe, so it is dead, but its tail is over the trapdoor, disabling it. If you want it to be functional, you will need to hack it off.”
“What about the second barn?”
“You got lucky. Its tail thrashed while it was dying and became pinned against the right wall.”
I grabbed my satchel from where it hung on the wall and then the machete. I was already holding my war pitchfork. “Lead the way.”
Due to my darkvision ability, the area was lit up like the day, and I could clearly see the barn six hundred yards ahead.
I took off running, matching Salem’s pace, moving faster than you were legally allowed to drive in a residential zone, only slowing when I got close to the barn’s giant stone structure.
Salem stayed ahead. Of the two of us, he was still the most agile and aware of his surroundings. Scouting only took him seconds. “It is still clear, but move quickly.”
I ran to the entrance and immediately understood the problem. The giant komododile I had seen go in was the size of the monster from Lake Placid. Its tail was almost thirty feet long and most of it was thicker than my shoulders. One of the swinging axes that had hit its body was shattered, lodged in its side, ripped from its housing by the creature's forward momentum as it tried to enter. The second swinging axe cut through it cleanly before several swinging log spears had impaled its head.
Its massive corpse now took up most of the centre of the barn. Bodies of the smaller versions were littered about the place, killed by other traps. Many of them must have gone into the second and third trapdoors because there weren't enough around to account for the number I had seen go in.
I tried not to get sidetracked thinking about how much experience the corpses contained as I made my way to the interior side of the trapdoor, moving safely around the edge. I probably could have walked straight over the top, but I wasn’t interested in taking unnecessary risks, not tonight at least.
A loot orb floated above the massive corpse, teasing me with how easily I could clear the trapdoor if I was willing to sacrifice the experience.
I ignored it, pressing my hand to its flesh instead, accepting the prompt offering me experience. A melon-sized crystal coalesced in my hand. I tossed it into the satchel and held my hand out as a second crystal just as large appeared.
I’d been a bit surprised to learn that there was a maximum size for experience crystals. It was the exact amount required to get to 100 in a class. You couldn’t go above. If you did, a second crystal would form. I tossed the second crystal into the satchel and waited for the new one to appear. I repeated the process three more times.
Big monsters meant big experience.
High-level monsters meant big experience.
Big, high-level monsters meant monstrous amounts of experience.
There was a small gap underneath the tail where it connected to the body. It was just enough space to squeeze my arm through, so I put the machete down and climbed on top of the tail, straddling it like a horse while fumbling open the pouch on my belt.
Quilly had complained about how hard it was to move the corpses that weren’t diced by her pitfalls. I’d told her to stop complaining and come up with a solution. Two days later, she’d handed us all one of her corpse cutters. The device looked like a four-inch-tall H when not in use.
I leaned down and wrapped my arms around the tail to hold each side of the device through the gap underneath. When I had everything lined up right, I twisted it, releasing the lock, freeing the mithril razor thread we used in the nets. I carefully extended the thread to its full length and then lifted it upwards.
A mistake here would cost me a finger.
Cutting through flesh with mithril thread was no harder than cutting through cake. Bone was a different story. I started sawing. Sure, I could have just pulled harder and got the job done, but I was pulling towards myself, not pushing away. If I moved the wrong way, I might cause myself a major injury or sever a limb.
Once I was through the bone, the rest was easy. Blood pooled on the ground as I carefully brought the two sides of the device back together. There was a mechanism inside that automatically retracted it, like a vacuum cleaner cord, so I didn’t have to mess around. I locked the two sides back into place, put it in my pocket, and climbed off the tail.
“It will fall into the trap when something walks over if you cut it just inside the edge of the trapdoor,” Salem offered.
“I could try to drag it away,” I said, making my way outside. “I’ve got forty strength.”
“Idiot. It weighs almost as much a troll.”
Well, that sucks.
I made my way over to the entrance and got to work on the other end of the tail. This time there was no gap underneath. I had to slice down with corpse cutter, going through flesh and bone, until I was only a few inches above the floor. Then, I put the cutter away and started hacking at it with my machete.
The flesh resisted the machete, but the gap widened and more and more parted with each passing second. In the end, it was just cutting meat. Really insanely tough thick meat, but meat none the less.
I worked fast and smart, knowing exactly how important time was in this situation. It would have been nice to have a swinging axe I could trigger to do the work fo
r me.
That could go into the next version of the barn.
There was always room for improvement.
“What do these things eat?” I said, still swinging.
“Everything they see…” Salem’s voice trailed off. “The giant’s here. And it is bigger. Much bigger.”
“Where?” I said, without looking up.
“It is on the far side of Lenlin’s barn. Closer to him than Pel. It is standing at the tree line.”
A deep, primitive roar filled the night. The sound vibrated through my chest and into my bones, but thankfully I wasn’t picked up and thrown.
The explosive volume sent shivers down my spine. The anxiety spike was stronger than I expected, but nowhere near strong enough to send me into a panic. The roar triggered an old memory, reminding me of the summer when my family had stayed at my aunt's in the country. I’d woken in the middle of the night to hear sirens. I’d panicked and run into my parents’ room. The siren had been from the fire station three miles away. It had boggled my young mind that anything could be that loud. The experience was good preparation for dealing with a giant.
“I think that was a rallying call,” Salem said. “Work faster.”
I kept hacking.
“I see trolls; they’re appearing in pairs, or threes, and ogres are showing up too. There are a dozen of them along the tree line. A tribe of cyclopes just showed up. I count at least eighty. I think it has summoned all its minions.”
The last of the tail separated into two.
“Another tribe of cyclopes have just appeared,” Salem said, tone worried. “I am losing track of numbers. It’s over three hundred. What do you want to do?”
I dropped the machete and reached for the fortified wineskin strapped to my back. My socialite ability turned alcohol into a weak stamina and fear resistance potion. And the wine in the skin was exceptionally good for stamina—an expensive vintage I’d purchased from the adventurers’ guild.
I pulled out the stopper and drank greedily. Sacrificing my stamina for extra speed was both a necessity and a danger. I’d learned that running insanely fast wasn’t something I got to do for free. It ate away at my stamina just as insanely quick once I pushed myself, so I needed to keep my tank topped up.
I was miles from bottoming out, and I wasn’t even breathing heavily, but I didn’t want to get caught out later and right now, I had free time. I barely tasted the wine as it went down. I’d already been drinking, so my mood was as good as it was going to be.
“Before I make a decision, what’s your assessment of the situation?”
I should have waited to ask until after I had finished turning, because now I could see almost a dozen trolls only a hundred yards away, standing between the trees. I would describe the look they were giving me as hungry.
Salem had his back to me as he watched the tree line. “Well, a sane person would run. However, you are not sane. And, the others might not make it if they try. I know you won’t abandon them, so your only option is to get back to your barn and wait. This is not what we expected. The giant is bigger and smarter than before, and it is making its minions behave like hunting dogs rather than mindless beasts.”
I took his advice and started running, quickly leaving the automated barn behind me. Salem followed. “How can you tell?” I asked him.
“Well, first of all, those trolls are not charging, despite staring directly at you. And second of all…they are not charging. Trolls do not exactly have a lot of self-control, Arnold.”
The trolls kept staring at me as the gap between us grew. I looked in the direction the roar had come from. It was well over a mile away, and though I could make out the giant’s shape, I couldn’t get any real details.
“To answer your earlier question, the plan hasn’t changed. We are still going to try to catch it. Now, what do you think the giant is going to do?”
“It’s not pushing forward, which makes me think it is waiting for the rest of its minions to arrive. That would make sense since it is a significantly higher level than we expected—so more intelligent.”
“How much higher? I can’t tell at this distance.”
“It’s level 73.”
“Shit.”
“I will go warn Jeric and the others and hopefully reach you before the giant acts. Remember the plan, do not draw its attention until after it goes in a direction away from the village.” He took off across the property, literally turning into a black streak with his crazy speed.
The pack with my cloak of monster taunting was on a hook inside the barn. I ran across the trapdoor and grabbed the pack, threw it over my shoulder, and returned to the entrance. I was as ready as I would ever be.
The goats trapped in the pen behind me bleated fearfully as the cool night air caressed my skin. The giant gave another bone-rattling roar, causing their bleats to increase in volume. They started head-butting the pen to try to escape.
I checked my immediate surroundings and then stopped and uncorked my wineskin. My stamina was barely down from the run back, so I only swallowed a mouthful, feeling the liquid run down my throat without tasting it.
With every passing second, more monsters appeared. I counted more than three hundred just in the first thousand yards.
An involuntary gulp occurred as I watched an ape the size of an elephant walk out of the forest on its knuckles. The tallest ogre only came up to the bottom of its shoulders. A few seconds passed and then three more appeared behind the first. The trolls on either side of them were more than thirty yards away, but they still backed up.
That reaction was terrifying.
How bad were those things if they scared trolls? The Monster Compendium which had arrived about two months ago classified apes as a higher mid-tier threat. They were physically bigger and stronger than the trolls and ogres and also significantly more intelligent. Intelligent enough that adventurers usually chose not to fight them unless they had to.
To my far left, a tribe of cyclopes walked out of the forest, numbering almost a hundred, each carrying a sharpened wooden spear or large club. They took one look at the building and started beating their chests.
“I should have built more barns. Fuck. Why didn’t I build more barns?”
Minutes passed. The speed at which new monsters appeared slowed. Around the five minute mark, the giant let out another explosive roar. And then it began to talk. I had no idea what it was saying, but the sounds it made had to be words. They were too orderly to be meaningless. The eyes of the monsters along the edge of the forest began to glow. To my darkvision they looked like torches.
“That’s cheating,” I whined
The monsters didn’t care.
Another twenty seconds passed, and then the giant gave a different massive roar. This one I understood. The urge to run at the monsters and destroy everything in sight flickered through me as the ability the giant was using caught me with a less intense form of its effect. The monsters charged, spilling out of the trees like a tidal wave of death, entering the village zone to destroy everything in their path.
My gaze swept down the tree line. Everything was moving. Everything was pushing forward. There had to be four hundred of them, just in my section. That was bad, but they were all converging on the only structures in sight—the barns—which was good.
A closer, smaller bellow made by a hundred loud voices began a rhythmic chant and pulled my attention to the automated barn six hundred yards to my left. I watched as the whole tribe of cyclopes ran for the barn, drawn in by the fearful bleats of the goats inside.
The past month had taught me several important lessons. First, the automated barns worked. Second, I needed a lot more of them, at least one every hundred yards. And third, the automated barns weren’t foolproof. A second manual layer of defence was definitely required because some monsters were smarter than others.
Luckily, cyclopes were not one of the monsters that were smart enough.
The tribe converged on the automated barn.
Dozens ran in and disappeared before the others farther back slowed their charge to move more carefully. The ones in the middle of the group had likely just watched the first wave rush in and immediately disappear. They looked like they didn’t want to press forward, but the biggest in the tribe, which were at the back, kept urging them on. There was no intelligence to their action. It was pure force of numbers.
Light enveloped me.
Well done, you have successfully killed several different types of monstrosities with traps. You have gained a new level in your Trapsmith skill.
Skill: Trapsmith
Level: 7
Effect:
+14% to your trapsmithing ability
+14% to your effectiveness at locating and camouflaging traps
A second later, more light hit me, along with another prompt.
Well done, you have successfully killed several different types of monstrosities with traps. You have gained a new level in your Trapsmith skill.
Skill: Trapsmith
Level: 8
Effect:
+16% to your trapsmithing ability
+16% to your effectiveness at locating and camouflaging traps
This was bad. You couldn’t turn off the prompts for leveling or stop the light, only change the way they were displayed. Right now, they were taking up most of my vision. I opened my interface and changed the information given down to its minimum.
I’d barely finished changing it when the next prompt hit me.
Well done, you have gained a new level in your Trapsmith skill. You are now level 9.
The difference to what I could see was noticeable, so was the amount of attention I was getting.
Well done, you have gained a new level in your Trapsmith skill. You are now level 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
In less than a minute, the huge number of cyclopes overwhelmed the barn I was watching, triggering trap after trap until they could no longer function. The survivors started breaking the stone walls and tearing the barn apart.
Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer Page 54
