by Dakota Krout
“Yeah, I get it. Thanks for the gear.” Joe started chuckling darkly as he left the shop, trying and failing to think of what he could do as revenge.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Joe stepped right back into the shop. His first steps outside had been interrupted by the braying laugh of a mustachioed Dwarf that ‘helpfully’ informed him that his current formal shoes ‘ruined the gravitas of his outfit’. In other words, he looked outright ridiculous. “Any chance you have some shoes that either match the clothes or my robe? I have normal shoes on, but…”
He walked out a few minutes later wearing white running shoes. They enhanced his speed out of combat by ten percent, which was nice. He was pleased to find that his discount at the Odds and Ends on Midgard somehow translated to this Zone, and even Minya had been confused as to why she was giving it to him. They had cost only five reputation with the Dwarven Council, which was… high? Low? He was still having trouble determining the worth of reputation as currency.
“If ten reputation is worth a full rank with any merchant, then even with the discount the boots were five hundred…?” Joe tried to decide if he was getting ripped off, but he really had no idea. Then he sighed as another revelation struck him. “Coulda just requisitioned them.”
He started skipping down the road, trying to remember where he needed to go in order to teleport to an area where he could fight things. After searching for far too long, he simply went to the wall and took note of the massive amount of Dwarves on guard duty. “Yeah… there’s gotta be plenty of things to kill around here if they are being this attentive.”
Joe walked out of the gate, getting a nasty shock when going under the portcullis. As soon as he passed that point, all of his active skills were turned off, and the enchantments on his gear faltered for a moment. He stumbled, coming to his senses to realize that over a dozen weapons were practically at his throat. One Dwarf grabbed him roughly and inspected his ears, then seemed to realize his Candidate title was active. The bearded Dwarf awkwardly patted Joe on the arm and grumbled, “Sorry, Bro. Standard nullification field at all points of entry. Can’t be too safe when there are so many illusionists out there. Let me help you through here. Can I carry anything for you, Friend of the Council? Need anything for your travels? Camping gear? Snacks?”
That was when Joe realized that he was about to leave a population center and go into the wild with zero preparation. “I… actually, that would be very useful. I need travel supplies and any information that you think would be useful when monster hunting. My… mentor suggested that I needed to gain some experience in this area before continuing on. I had planned to come back into the city, I think, but… perhaps I could spend some time in seclusion.”
“Oh!” The Dwarf grinned widely and walked Joe to a gatehouse. “I’m so pleased to be of service! Come, come! Human Bro, I have exactly what you want, and you don’t even know it! Here’s a map; this spot here is a cave system called the ‘Caves of Solitude’. It’s directly adjacent to Gramma’s Shoe, so you wanna make sure to stay on the path; but if you go there, I guarantee that no other Dwarves are gonna bother you. I can even give you a quest to hunt down some Air Spirits. Good reputation, you get to be alone, plenty of space to work out issues. Sound like a plan?”
“Yeah… by ‘Air Spirits’, you mean earth-using spirits… would that be earth elementals?” Joe quizzed for clarity.
“O’ course!” The Dwarf shook his head as if Joe was being funny. “You had to have been in the Legion for a while if you’re a Candidate, so you should at least understand what monster names mean. Gear is here, standard stockpile; and here’s the quest. Reputation or requisition?”
Quest alert: Wait, This Air Is Mud! The Caves of Solitude, a common destination for the discerning Dwarf seeking a little rest, have recently been used by Air Spirits as a rest spot for themselves. This is unacceptable, as only Dwarves and their allies should have rest and relaxation. Destroy the Air Spirits when you find them. Reward: 1 reputation with the Legion per spirit laid to rest. Failure: none. Deposit: 10 Legion reputation. Defeat 10 spirits and your deposit will be refunded.
Joe swiped his hand forward and took in the small pile of travel gear. “Requisition for sure. Where are the spirits coming from, if this is a new thing?”
“Want that quest too, bro? Gotta put rep on the line for this one. Messes up the rewards otherwise,” the Dwarf cheerfully stated. He blinked a few times, and a quest appeared in Joe’s vision.
Quest alert: Air Spirits Suck. The Legion has been asked to find the source of the encroaching Air Spirits. Yet, since they can sink into the earth, the source of the incursion has been hard to track. Find the reason the spirits are invading this territory, and put a stop to it or report the issue. Reward: 1,000 reputation with the Legion. Failure: None. Deposit: 100 Legion reputation. At a minimum, report the reason to refund your deposit.
Joe whistled at the quest. “That’s a big deposit… why?”
“Caves of Solitude are supposed to be sparsely populated, Bro.” The Dwarf punched Joe’s shoulder in a friendly manner, taking out fifteen health and reminding Joe that he needed to reactivate his protections. “Some big shots go there, and they were getting annoyed at all the people crawling over their vacation spot. The Air Spirits can’t do anything to them, so…”
“Could they be the reason the spirits are there? They want more privacy?” Joe’s brow furrowed as he thought about the quest.
“Wow! The quest was just completed!” The Dwarf gasped.
“Really?”
“Course not, dumb Bro.” The Dwarf chuckled at him, and Joe laughed after a moment as well. “Gotcha, though. Nah, that’s already been looked into. Want the quest or no?”
Joe looked at his untouched Legion reputation. He was sitting at negative five hundred and seventy; all of his pay so far still hadn’t brought him up to neutral. Finishing this quest would take care of that, and at worst, he was out ten day’s worth of pay from his ‘basic training’. “Yeah, I’ll take it.”’
-100 reputation with the Dwarven Legion! Current reputation: -670 (Cautious).
“Good hunting, Candidate Bro…” The Dwarf watched as Joe started sparkling, flashed with a dark light, then all traces of sweat vanished. “Candidate mage Bro?”
“Yeah, and thanks for the information.” Joe walked out of the city properly this time, studying the map he had… gained. It listed various areas around the city, and included the average level and type of monsters that he could expect to run into. “Holy guacamole, this map must be worth… don’t think about it, Joe. Don’t lose or damage the map.”
The Caves of Solitude were apparently more popular than the guard had let on, as there was a clear path that led directly there. Yet, the road was distinctly marked as ‘not safe’ on the map for some reason. There were… Joe looked at the map more closely. “What in the abyss is a ‘Hammer Beast’?”
He didn’t need to wait very long to find out. A creature rolled along the path, at first glance appearing to be an oversized boulder. As it neared Joe, the ball unfurled into a… the best way Joe could describe it to himself was an ‘armadillo turtle’. It was heavily armored over its entire body, yet had an especially thick shell around its torso that it could curl into. Just like every other monster native to this Zone, it had two heads as well. They extended on flexible necks, and while it stood still, it strangely reminded Joe of a snail as it looked at him.
A heavily armored, spike-covered, fast creature. “Ah. Hammer Beast. Hit it with a hammer, because blades are just going to bounce off.”
Joe once more groaned at the Dwarven naming conventions, but he had to admit that it was an effective way to describe and share the weaknesses. The beast jumped lightly into the air, snapping into a ball, then rolled at Joe aggressively. As a ball, it reached the center of Joe’s chest at the highest point, and he knew that he really didn’t want to get hit by that thing. He had a simple solution to this issue, and grinned cheerfully as he jumped o
ver the ball and landed on his feet with a chuckle.
He looked behind himself just in time to see the spiked ball coming back at him twice as fast as it had been just a moment ago, and his eyes went wide as it crushed him into the ground and tried to turn him into a waffle. Specifically not a pancake, what with all the holes it tried to drill into him.
Sneak attack successful: 917 damage taken. (Crushing/Piercing).
Exquisite Shell: 2,645/3,562.
“Ow. Seriously, almost a third of my shell in one go?” The ball continued past him, reaching the spot it had started from and popping out to see if Joe had been destroyed. Joe groaned and got to his feet, staring murder at the Hammer Beast. “Oh, look, you have an attack pattern I can exploit. I appreciate the opportunity to test my new weapon on you, beast bro.”
Joe chuckled at the absurdity of his words as he mentally lifted two of his new orbs into the air. Maybe his time with the Dwarves was affecting him more than he thought it had been.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Hammer Beast wasn’t giving Joe any time to prepare himself, but that was fine by him… at first. Joe was all sorts of excited to have some ball vs orb action, until he realized that the beast’s ability to maneuver was far superior to his own. In fact, all the beast’s physical characteristics topped his by a significant amount.
Joe dove out of the way again as the beast rolled past him, still getting clipped by a spike on the outer edge of its armored shell.
Exquisite Shell: 2,299/3,562.
“Abyss! That barely touched me!” Joe wasted no time in striking the beast with lightning, completely forgetting his new weapon in his haste to deal some damage. The spell hit just after his shadow dissipated, missing the beast entirely but at least catching it in the area of effect.
Damage dealt: 267 (AOE of Dark Lightning Strike and 41% damage return from Retaliation of Shadows.)
Joe remembered his orbs, and looked around to find them. They had fallen to the ground and were just… sitting there… so he tried to get them back in the air and attacking on his behalf. Just as they lifted off, he had to move again as the beast came rolling back at him once more. The orbs fell to the ground as soon as his mind was off of them, but at least Joe had managed to avoid the follow-up attack. The Hammer Beast skidded to a stop, unfurled, and got a bead on his new location once more. With a sound a buzz saw would have been jealous of, the beast shot toward the Reductionist again.
Joe jumped, this time past the original attacking position of the beast, and sent a Cone of Cold at the creature. He missed entirely as the beast stayed ahead of the attack and moved over thirty feet in the blink of an eye. He was hoping that the layer of frost left on the ground would make it harder to roll on, but had forgotten the Hammer Beast’s spikes, which allowed it to power past the area without issue like it was wearing cleats. It came to a stop right about the same spot it had started from, but it unexpectedly stayed in that position for a longer time.
It took an Acid Spray and a hundred and thirty damage on its shell for the trouble, but it was also able to find Joe as soon as the stinging liquid started to eat away at it. It let out a screech from both heads, and Joe felt something… latch onto him?
You have been targeted!
“What does that even mean?” Joe didn’t have the option to look deeper into the message, as the Hammer Beast started moving in an odd manner that it hadn’t used before. It shot directly at him, as per usual, but when he got out of the way, it no longer came back in a straight line. Instead, the beast swerved to put itself directly on a collision course for him again. “Balls! Attack!”
Joe ordered the two orbs off the ground and sent them spiraling in for an attack. They hit the beast head on, actually slowing the buzz-saw movement slightly. There was a tremendous *crack* and the orbs went flying into the long grass surrounding the road that Joe was on. A small notification let him know that they had hit for fifty-eight blunt damage each thanks to his new ring and automatically applied bonus armor penetration, but Joe lost sight of them entirely. “An~n~nd they’re gone.”
As the beast came at him, Joe went for the tried-and-true ploy, jumping over it to get into a better position for attack. To his terror, the beast bounced off the ground at him, and only the power that Joe had put into the jump allowed him to avoid taking a spike directly to the face. The ball whizzed under him by a fraction of a foot as he watched with wide eyes in almost slow motion.
Joe pulled two more of his orbs out of his ring before he hit the ground, sending them at the curving-around figure of the Hammer Beast. He urged them onto their greatest speed, casting Dark Lightning Strike just as they landed on the beast. There was a tremendous *bang* as the three attacks hit as one, and the beast was dazed by the various pains it was feeling, so much so that it flopped out of position and landed roughly on the ground. It bounced a few times, slowly coming to its feet and trying to reorient itself on the human causing it such injury.
Damage dealt: 1,180 (140 blunt + 1,050 Dark) (Perfect critical hit!) Target is dazed for four seconds!
Joe was astonished at the damage values that he had just seen, but he barely wasted a moment in getting his orbs back into position for attack. Since his target wasn’t moving much, he pulled out the last two orbs and added them into the next attack, now having four orbs out and moving together to strike the beast. He tried to cast a spell at the same time, but the orbs faltered. To get around the complication, he sent all four into the air above the beast and simply moved them only up and down. Then he only needed to focus on ‘hit it’ as he used both his hands to achieve the somatic portion of casting Cone of Cold again, this time with a reasonable certainty of hitting.
The four orbs bounced off the hardened shell of the beast, and Joe was pleased for the first time that they dealt blunt damage instead of anything else. His icy spray erupted from in front of his hands, this time catching the beast without issue.
Damage dealt: 457 (232 blunt + 225 cold!) Target has been inflicted with ‘Brittle’.
The dazed effect wore off just as the orbs came down once more, only three of them landing but still doing enough damage to finish off the Hammer Beast. Its shell broke as the blunt attack took advantage of the brittle effect to deal double damage to rigid objects. The orbs finished out the fight embedded in the shell in three perfectly round divots.
Joe was wheezing from the effort this fight had required, and he stumbled over to the corpse, kicking it once for catharsis before storing his orbs. He touched the body and used a burst of mana to scan it, then let his ingrained Ritual of Reduction take the creature. There was no Core left behind, and Joe would have smacked himself if he wasn’t afraid that his Retaliation of Shadows might show up and do it as well. “I really need to get better at using Corify.”
After the aftermath of the battle had been taken care of, Joe waded through the grass and started searching for his missing Ritual Orbs. It took almost ten minutes of searching, since they had been buried in the tall blades, and he resolved to assign a characteristic to them as soon as possible so that they would automatically recall in the future. “Oh, I wonder what that Hammer Beast was worth?”
Experience gained: 114
Skill increase: Assisted Ritual Orb Usage (Novice VIII).
“That’s… not much.” Joe looked at the skill increases with slight despair. “Then again… it was only a single monster. Just because it was hard for me to fight it doesn’t mean that I should get extra rewards for it… I guess.”
He continued down the road, more carefully this time. On the map, Hammer Beasts were written in as one of the weaker things that he could encounter in the area. It also said that most things tended to move in packs, so he was getting slightly nervous about his choice to set out on his own. As a Candidate, he was almost certain that he would have been able to order a team to come with him as backup. Still… Joe took in the sights of grass and stony ground with a smile on his face. It had been a while since he had adventured on his own.
It was refreshing.
That is, it was refreshing, until he heard the sound of buzz saws closing in on his location. “One, two, four?”
Joe counted the incoming noises with pure nervousness. He looked around wildly, realizing with dismay that there was very little cover. The capital wasn’t overly friendly to nature, as that was the Elven domain, so trees were sparse and twisted. He had been getting closer to the Caves of Solitude, and the ground had started to shift from grassy plains to foothills and somewhat mountainous territory. There were several large boulders scattered around, and one caught his eye. It was shaped more like a pillar than anything else, reaching about twelve feet off the ground and having sheer sides.
The Hammer beasts were closing in, now visible and only… maybe sixty feet out? They were surprisingly hard to see when they were moving through grass, but Joe didn’t pay too much attention to that. He got to the side of the pillar and looked up. “It's a great defensive location, but how do I get up there?”
He looked up, and a smile appeared on his face as he remembered, “I need to stop thinking like a baseline human. I have skills and characteristics now!”
Just before the Hammer Beasts reached him, Joe jumped, putting his skill and strength to the test. He needn't have worried, as he launched up and onto the pillar with an ease that shocked him. “One hundred and thirty-three strength really makes that skill overpowered, huh?”
Joe looked down at the four Hammer Beasts that were attempting to waffle him, and his grin only got wider. Six orbs dropped out of his ring, and lightning crackled through the air at the beasts below. “I need to remember to position myself for combat better in the future. I’m a spellcaster. I’m not supposed to meet these things head on.”
It only took six minutes to finish off the beasts, and Joe jumped from the pillar with a cheerful smile on his face. Whistling, he cleaned up the battlefield and continued on his way to the Caves of Solitude. He tossed a single Uncommon Core that was glowing brightly into the air, once, twice, then stored it away with a grin.
