Duskbound

Chapter 11

Monsters killed each other all the time. They had to in order to level up, just like people. As far as Velik was aware, they didn't have classes, so they couldn't earn levels from doing other things like cooking or carpentry like those who possessed a crafting class could. One monster attacking another wasn't much of a surprise, especially when they were two completely different types.

That meant that the only thing Velik really needed to do in order to bring this fight down to a one-on-one was to get out of the new monster's way and let it go through the bear all on its own. That, he could do. It was a simple matter to leap straight up into the trees and let the two monsters fight. He'd take on the winner, not that he had any doubt which one that would be.

At least, that was the plan. What actually ended up happening was that the moment his feet left the ground, the wolverine jumped on him. Velik got his spear up between them, but the spear failed to pierce the monster's fur. The only reason it didn't snap was its [Shape Shifting] enchantment, which allowed for enough give that it bent instead.

Velik was thrown backwards from the force of the impact, while the wolverine went slightly to the side. They landed at almost the exact same moment, mere inches apart. Snarling, it scrambled to its feet and raked its claws across Velik's leg. He flinched away and flung himself off the ground with one arm, but he wasn't fast enough to fully avoid being hit. His pants tore and blood splattered into the dirt, but the hooked claws failed to drag him in.

He flipped back up to his feet, wincing as pain shot up his leg, but confident he could still fight. Fully focused on the wolverine, he didn't realize that the armored bear monster was right behind him now. It had charged forward in the last second, and Velik honestly wasn't sure if it was targeting him in particular or if he just had the bad luck to be closer. Either way, its jaw closed around his forearm and tried to drag him back to the ground.

Velik didn't have 97 physical for nothing, though. The bear was strong, especially considering its size, but when he flexed his leg muscle, its teeth couldn't penetrate like the wolverine's claws had. A quick chop of his shortened spear on the bear's face was all it took to get it to release him, and just in time, too.

Wolverines weren't noted for their calm, docile behavior, so it wasn't very surprising when it didn't stand still and wait. By the time Velik was free, it was already wading in to rip everything it could reach to shreds. Fortunately, this time it overcommitted to the attack and he was able to get out from between the two monsters.

Another notification flashed across his vision, crediting him with an assist on the second steel pelt bear, not that he felt he'd done much. If anything, the bear was helping him. He circled behind the wolverine while it savaged the bear's corpse, reshaped his spear's tip into what was basically a needle, then slammed it in with all the [Duskbound] strength he could muster.

The good news was that it slipped through the wolverine's fur and sunk into its muscled back. The bad news was that, if anything, it grew even more frenzied. Armored flesh flew in every direction as it tore the bear apart, perhaps mistakenly believing the other monster was the cause of its pain. Does it even feel pain though?

The dead bear saved him. He never would have gotten out of the way on his own, but the wolverine slipped on a strand of entrails in its frenzied rush to reach Velik. It wasn't much of a slip—four-legged animals generally had excellent balance no matter how low their stats were—but it gave Velik that fraction of a second he needed to regain his feet and get his spear up.

The next fifteen minutes of his life were among the worst he could remember. There'd been hard fights in the past, especially when he was still a kid, wielding nothing but a slightly-crooked tree branch with an end he'd sharpened using a pocket knife he'd stolen before he'd been kicked out of town. But this was something else. The wolverine was almost impossible to even hurt, and it didn't seem to care when it did take a hit. It just kept coming, no matter what.

Considering its relatively small stature, Velik would have expected it to bleed out by now. Morgus knew he was feeling dizzy enough from his own blood loss, and he'd only taken a half dozen hits compared to the fifty or more the wolverine was suffering from. Its whole body was a matted black mess of monster-blood-soaked fur.

It kept going full tilt right up until the end, when it died mid-air while flinging its whole body at Velik's face. He saw the instant the life went out of its eyes, with its face still locked into a snarl and its body coming straight at him. He dropped to a knee and let the wolverine's body fly over his head.

[You have slain a gloan wolverine (level 26).]

[Spear Warden has advanced to rank 5.]

Velik's very first action was to reach into his waist pack for a healing potion. Thankfully, system glass was near-indestructible, and the vial was intact. He tilted it back and swallowed the whole thing in one go, then sighed in relief as it went to work.

And it wasn't even an elite! he thought as he eyed the system notification. Why was it so damn strong? Maybe I was right to think I wasn't ready for this yet. This is only the first day and I... well, I don't want to say it nearly killed me, but it came a lot closer than anything else has in years. Two monsters like that could do it, especially during the day.

But all the reasons he'd had for venturing into the deep wood were still valid. He needed to figure out what had caused the sudden spike in monsters, and that wasn't going to happen if he just stuck to his normal stretch of forest and killed monsters as they appeared. With an unhappy sigh, he started walking farther north. He had a worg to hunt down, and several more hours of darkness before he needed to find a place to sleep.