Duskbound

The arrow struck the scalehound's flank, but instead of biting deep, it shattered into pieces. The monster, undeterred, continued its menacing stalk toward Jensen. Another arrow materialized, already set to his bow string, and he took a moment to steady his breathing before he released it. This one was aimed for the scalehound's eye, but it simply turned its head and took the shot to the shoulder instead. That attack had no more effect than the first one.

"Gods above and below! What level is this thing?" he swore. He didn't want to pull on the bracer's magic any deeper than he already was, but he just couldn't hurt the scalehound with basic arrows. Exhausting the bracer was a concern for later.

Concentrating, he shaped another arrow out of pure magic, this one heavy with a [Sharp] enchantment. At the same time, he called on his bow to imbue the shot with [Accuracy] and [Resilience]. His belt already gave him a strong bonus to physical, but it had an active effect to temporarily boost that even further. Finally, the ring on his left index finger added a layer of [Edge of Winter], coating the tip of the arrow in razor-sharp ice.

If that didn't finally get through this thing's scaly hide, nothing would. Perhaps sensing danger, the scalehound lurched into an ungainly, lopsided run. It closed the distance from fifty feet to ten in less than a second, then Jensen released the arrow. It jumped from the string to the scalehound's eye so fast that he couldn't see its path with his eyes, not even with the [Perceptive] enchantment on his hat boosting his already impressively-fortified mental.

[You have slain a burnished scalehound (level 24).]

The shaft vibrated in place, more than halfway buried in the monster's skull now. Jensen felt the tension drain out of him and he let out a relieved sigh. The monster's momentum had carried it the rest of the way after its death, and its corpse was sprawled out at Jensen's feet. "That was a close one."

"But you held steady and made the shot," Torwin told him. "I knew you could do it."

I'm glad one of us did.

"Do you think there are any more nearby?" he asked.

"No," his master said with a shake of his head. "I took care of the rest."

What 'rest?!'

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Jensen looked around wildly, his eyes flicking from corpse to corpse. Most of them were half-hidden beneath the brush or behind trees, and he knew there were a few he couldn't see, but he counted nine more scalehounds, each one dead from a single arrow somewhere in its body.

How does he do it? His bow would break from the force needed to throw an arrow that fast, and I know he's just buying the ammunition from local fletchers. There are no enchantments in play here. They should have shattered on impact.

Jensen already knew what answer he'd get. Torwin would just laugh and cite skills, then get cagey about exactly just how many skills he had merged together to fill those six slots he'd unlocked. Considering the man's prolific career as a monster hunter, Jensen had no doubt the number could be classified as 'a lot.'

"I meant more like, 'Will there be more monsters of the same level nearby?'" Jensen said, trying to inject some eagerness in his voice. That wasn't what he'd meant at all, but he didn't want his master thinking he was weak. It wasn't that he was afraid of encountering more monsters, just that he was concerned about running out of the magic he needed to actually hurt the damn things.

"Oh, I'm sure they'll get stronger the farther out we go. Civilization is what keeps monster levels low. When you get out into places like this, the monsters just keep killing each other and stacking on levels. As far as I can tell, the only reason these towns even still exist is because of the Black Fang. Without his presence, those towns would have been overrun a long time ago, and there's nothing out here worth fighting to keep, so the government would just abandon the frontier."

"Abandoning this place might be the right decision," Jensen said. "The townsfolk should head south while they still have their lives. No matter how many monsters we kill, more just keep coming. And they're getting stronger."

Torwin nodded along. "You're right, of course. Right now, we're doing exactly what the Black Fang has been doing for the last decade. We're stalling things, reacting to monsters as we find them instead of solving the root problem. There will always be more monsters, sure, but there shouldn't be so many, not so fast. Something is accelerating their population growth, and we need to figure out what that is and stop it."

"And so we're going to this old dungeon that was broken fifty years ago or whenever."

"Right again," Torwin said. "Now, does your gear need a bit longer to recharge or are you ready to proceed?"

"No, I'm good for a few more fights, at least. Though with the amount of magic I'm using just to put an arrow into these things, I'm going to be about worthless by the time the sun goes down."

"That's easily remedied. You just need to locate vulnerabilities, like you did with that one you shot in the eye. That's an obvious spot on most monsters, but it's not always viable. There are some signs that'll tell you where scales or fur are thinner, and of course, it pays to study what your predecessors wrote down about the monsters they hunted. Why, I remember once…"

Jensen had long since grown used to taking in Torwin's lectures while they scouted or fought. He still hated it, though, as the old man's voice inevitably drew in more monsters. Once, Jensen had tried to raise that point, but his master had just laughed and started a new lecture on the topic of working his way out of a disadvantageous position, such as an ambush.

Overhead, the sun slowly sank toward the tree tops in the western sky.

* * *

As interesting as it was to see what the area's new [Druid] would do, Velik had already spent too much time on Sildra already. He had his own leads to chase down, which meant gathering a few thousand more decarmas and purchasing something that would let him get a read on mana levels. It was an awfully expensive tool just to test a theory, but Velik didn't have a better idea.

If he was right about monsters showing up where mana was the thickest, then hopefully he could find those spots, figure out why mana was thicker there, and fix it. Unfortunately, he didn't have the funds to afford any sort of mana-sensing gear that could be useful at the moment, not unless he could find a way to measure mana over miles and miles of wild forests using nothing but his sense of touch.

It seemed easier to just save up for something that would better suit his purposes.

A month ago, he would have thought differently, but discovering how much quicker decarmas stacked up when he was fighting monsters five or more levels above his own had changed his sense of scale. It had taken years to save up the fifty thousand decarmas for his spear, but at the rate he was going now, he was confident he could buy another one in four months or less.

Not to say that the spear wasn't worth it. [Shape Shifting] alone is an excellent enchantment. Having [Bleeding], [Sharp], and [Mending] on it as well is almost too good. If only it didn't have this stupid name, 'Blood Seeker.' Did the system come up with that or…?

Regardless of how it had been named, it was an excellent weapon that Velik fully expected to use for the rest of his life. It could assume any shape he needed, repaired itself when damaged, and was optimized to stab holes into monsters and make them bleed profusely, no matter how shallow the wound was. It was practically the perfect weapon.

His cowl, by comparison, was relatively weak. That he'd purchased from a merchant on a caravan a year before, mostly by trading a lot of furs and other rare natural treasures he'd picked up in the forest. It had [Night Vision] on it, which was worthless to him, but it also contained [Perceptive], which increased his mental stat's impact on his senses, and [Resilient], which helped him deal with things like night screamers and nosy guild hunters trying to use skills on him.

The boots he'd bought from the system store as well, mostly because he kept wearing through his and wanted footwear enchanted with [Mending]. That they also had [Silent] and [Strider] to help him walk long distances quickly and quietly was just a nice bonus. He could only hope that when he did finally pick up a piece of gear that let him sense mana, it would also have a few other useful abilities.

Maybe something that gives a large boost to mystic would be useful once I free up the skill slot that [Stealth] is in. Some of those skills looked downright useful, but not enough to start investing free points into mystic. If I could make up the difference in the low stat with gear, though, it might be worth it.

Velik hadn't given it a lot of thought before, mostly because he'd expected it would be many years before he had enough decarmas saved up again, and even now, he had to restock his used potions before he truly started looking at new pieces of gear. But the decision suddenly seemed a lot closer than it had a month ago, and he idly perused the system store while he ran north, just to get an idea of what was available and how much it would cost him.

I wonder, though. If level 30 to 35 monsters are dropping decarmas this fast, what about level 40 or 50? Oh, the things I could do with that kind of money.

So lost in thought was he, dreaming of belts, rings, amulets, bracers, gloves, and the like, that he almost didn't realize there was someone nearby until he was only a few hundred feet away from them. Startled out of his daydreaming, he came to a halt and crouched down, only to scowl in annoyance when he recognized the voices.

Those two, again?!