We Hunt Monsters 14, page 23
With that said, he cut the connection. He’d barely closed his eyes when another person tried to make contact. He knew who it was and decided that it could wait until morning. What he decided didn’t seem to matter though, as the person on the other end of the connection was extremely persistent. Finally, he just had to give in. Otherwise, he knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep.
“This better be important,” Keith said.
“It’s connected!” Melkin’s excited voice said, echoing loudly in his mind. “It’s all connected!”
“Care to elaborate?”
“As I’m sure you know, any ecosystem is carefully balanced, each piece fitting into its space so that things keep running smoothly. At first, I believed Monstros was just such a place, only that it was connected by smaller sections. But I was wrong. The entire continent is one giant ecosystem! Take one small thing out of place…”
“…and everything else will begin falling apart,” Keith finished, slowly sitting up in bed.
“Exactly!” Melkin said, her excitement palpable through their mental connection. “Killing Electrus might have been necessary to our survival if we wanted to push deeper into the continent, but killing him threw off the storm paths of one of the other monsters, causing the collision we all witnessed.”
“If that is indeed the case, what sort of damage will killing one or both of them do?” Keith replied.
“I can honestly say that I have no idea,” Melkin replied. “The monsters have already started acting more hostile and aggressive. A working theory I have is that in the absence of the storms, new apex predators will begin battling it out, and if we stick around, we’ll be stuck right in the middle of it all.”
Keith was happy to hear that his theory that Electrus’s death had indeed been the cause of the rogue monster collision was correct, but he had to wonder why this couldn’t have simply waited until morning. He expressed that sentiment to Melkin, making sure she knew how annoyed he was by the interrupted sleep.
“Oh, this has just been bugging me for a while,” she replied. “But it’s not the main reason I contacted you. Selena told me she reached out to tell you about an interesting discovery we made earlier in the day. It’s hidden near the lake. A series of symbols was traced into the wall. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it all day, and I finally think I’ve deciphered its meaning. If I’m not mistaken, this is a seal. Specifically, one that will open into a tunnel.”
Keith took a moment to allow the implications to sink in. A seal to a tunnel that might very well lead to another subterranean space, meaning that the remainder of their Monstros exploration might very well be able to take place underground, free of all the deadly hazards the continent was known for.
This was something worth getting up for.
“Any ideas on how to undo it or what will happen when you do?” Keith asked.
“Afraid not,” she replied. “As best I can tell, the writing is really old. Older than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. Even if I knew how to crack it, I wouldn’t want to go undoing any seals until you were here in case we need to fight anything.”
“How likely do you think that is?”
“I’d give it a fifty/fifty shot of triggering some sort of fight,” Melkin said. “But considering that the subterranean space seems to be safe, it’s possible it could go the other way. It could just be a puzzle that needs solving. I can keep working on deciphering it for now while the others continue searching for clues. I will say, though, that the knowledge that those two monsters are duking it out aboveground is a little alarming, especially when they might rip the continent in half. I hope you’re working on some sort of solution, wherever you are.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Keith said, letting out a slow breath. “I won’t have my entire plan derailed by a couple of monsters who don’t know when to give up and go their own separate ways.”
With that, the connection ended, though Keith didn’t go back to sleep. He had far too much on his mind and thankfully had someone else to bounce ideas off of as he slid out of bed and walked over to the window, looking out over the city.
“So, how do we manage this?” he asked, staring out at the bobbing lanterns as guard patrols made their way through the city. “We have two monsters who are, at the very least, on Electrus’s level. Their combined storms inflict more damage than just about anyone in our little group can take for more than a few minutes, and that doesn’t account for any of the damage they might dish out.”
“I thought the answer was obvious, bro,” Tac said. “You either need more orcs who you can use as fodder, or you need more automatons who can die as many times as needed until the job gets done.”
“Tac, you know that just throwing fodder at these monsters doesn’t do anything,” Keith replied. “They’ll all be obliterated before they come within a few feet.”
“I mean, the obvious choice is to take one of the monsters’ sides and use it to help us kill the other one. Then, when it’s dead, we just turn on the monster we’ve been helping.”
That was a strategy they could take. The problem again was how to go about challenging such a monster safely and then have the stamina to tackle the second immediately after. It was a risky proposition at the best of times. If Keith had five more of himself, he’d be confident diving into something like this. He had access to a monster of his own, but it had cost him quite a bit to acquire said monster, and he didn’t want to needlessly kill it.
“Come on, bro, you’re a walking arsenal,” Tac said. “All you really need is a group of individuals to keep their attention split. Sure, we don’t have information on either monster we’re facing, but it can’t be any more difficult than fighting one of the World Monsters.”
That much was true. He had access to World-level effects, such as the Spirit of the Primordial Hunter, which would increase his stats by a factor of 500. Keith had used it in the past against Shorga, the Orc Emperor, and while he could only activate it once every three weeks, it wouldn’t be long before he could use it again. He also had a myriad of powerful skills and items he could use, in addition to a few World Items.
While he couldn’t directly target the monsters themselves, he still had several activations of the Mountainous Frost. That sparked the beginnings of an idea in the back of his mind, and Keith had to suppress a grin as he turned in place, his armor appearing over his body in a flash.
“Can you give me the location of the nearest monster?” he asked Tac, already heading to the door. “I’d prefer Raid Bosses or above.”
“Oh, you better bet I can,” Tac said, projecting the image of hands rubbing together in glee. “This is gonna be a bloodbath.”
33
Keith’s carriage raced between the trees, the wheel twisting left and right as he avoided them as best he could. Still, with their packed nature, there were some inevitable collisions.
“You know, I think leaving Bob in your room was a good idea,” Tac said as the carriage tore a chunk out of the side of yet another tree. “I feel like he would have been doing a lot of complaining when there’s nothing to really complain about.”
Keith had debated waking Bob, if only for his expertise, but considering what he was doing, he’d decided he didn’t need to trouble him. In short, he was hunting for powerful monsters to harvest their Essence. He was low after the creation of his last automaton, Merry, who’d come to life through the use of Automania and a lot of Essence.
When thinking about how he could handle this mess with the two dueling monsters, Tac had made a good point. All he really needed was a group to keep one of the monsters off him. The problem was that they needed to be strong enough to handle the environment and sturdy enough to take some punishment. After all, there was no guarantee that either of the monsters would be willing to work with him. Heck, they could both turn on him the second he chose to interfere.
The obvious conclusion was that he needed powerful fighters who could take as much punishment as possible without the risk of death involved. Tac’s earlier suggestion of throwing automatons at them had been a bit brutish, but with a bit of tweaking, he did see a way in which this could work. It would take a lot of hustling from him while he was there, which meant he wouldn’t sleep until he returned to Monstros the following night.
“Looks like the trees are opening up. You should be right on top of it when you come out,” Tac said, an instant before the trees began thinning.
Keith continued to barrel forward as he flashed from between the final trees, the carriage roaring out into the open.
The monster appeared suddenly, visible in the blinding headlamps illuminating the landscape before him. The creature looked like a miniature mountain, its craggy hide covered in thick stone, with mossy protrusions and spines that looked almost like trees.
“It’s not a turtle, is it?” Tac asked. “Please don’t tell me it’s one of those stupid cliché monsters that turns out to be a landmass on a turtle’s shell.”
The monster was not a turtle. That much was obvious by how it uncurled, the previous, hill-like appearance vanishing as it bellowed, revealing a long snout like that of a crocodile with hundreds of jagged and misaligned teeth poking from within. The monster’s front legs were heavily muscled, the stone creating a thick armor, while its claws, the size of broadswords, extended from its strangely elongated toes. A single glance at its status showed it to be a Raid Boss. A Level 68 Raid Boss, to be exact.
A monster like this would call for a team of highly skilled and powerful hunters. Probably a minimum of 30 melee fighters, 20 ranged fighters and casters, with five healers to back them up. Maybe even a couple of artillery units to crack its thick armor before any real damage could be done. It would be a risky proposition at the best of times, and there would likely be many injuries and more than a few deaths.
To Keith, this was just an inconvenience. He didn’t bother slowing the carriage down. If anything, he sped up, turning the carriage into a battering ram and casting Indestructible from All-Terrain Psycho, further speeding up the carriage while making it immune to damage. The monster didn’t even know what hit it. One moment, it was bellowing its challenge, prepared for the fight of its life, the next, it was dead, Keith having plowed straight through its dense body, sending shards of armor, blood, gore and internal stuff everywhere.
-880,290, Massive Critical, Ramming
Gaterlord the Immovable dies!
+26,000 XP
+13,000 Bonus XP
It just went to show how little the System thought he deserved for killing this monster. Any normal fight would have resulted in well over a hundred thousand XP per fighter, depending on level and skill. He walked away with probably a fifth of what anyone else might get, and that was only because of his fifty-percent XP bonus.
“That is so gross,” Tac said as Keith cracked the door of the carriage open, blood and gore dripping off its sides as he did. “Kind of reminiscent of getting gum stuck to the bottom of your shoes.”
“Thanks for that visual,” Keith said. “Now it’ll forever be stuck in my brain when we do this again.”
“Always here to help,” Tac said, purposely obtuse.
“Let’s just get this over with,” he sighed, walking around to the monster’s front end.
The head had been spared from damage, seeing as it was high off the ground during the collision. The big hole had been formed when he’d rammed into the main part of its body. The monster lay on its side, blood pooling around it, its massive, barbed tongue hanging out of its open mouth. He looted the corpse, starting his grisly stockpile for the trade he knew was coming, then extracted all the Essence he could. It wasn’t a lot, but it was better than nothing.
“One down, many more to go,” Keith sighed, stashing the Essence as he straightened and turned to head back to his carriage.
He was only halfway there when he heard a screeching roar in the distance, a large shadow suddenly falling over him as a wave of dread and terror slammed into him with the force of a battering ram.
A titanic creature covered in leathery black skin appeared above the treetops. It had to be well over sixty feet long, which didn’t include its sinuous, spaded tail. It was draconic in shape, though it was clearly not a dragon. It was too slender in the chest and wings, and as it circled, Keith could see that its back was covered in bristling hairs. Bony ridges stood out against its taut flesh, making it appear even more nightmarish. The monster turned around, and Keith got a good look at its face. It was distinctly bat-like, with huge, glowing eyes, a short snout, and a pig-like nose.
It shrieked again, its back legs clawing at the air, while its wings – which would also serve as its front legs when it landed – flapped harder, buffeting the clearing with powerful gusts of wind. A purple haze rippled across its body as the monster circled again, the shriek near-deafening as its eyes locked onto him.
Spheres of purple light gathered around it, crackling into being with dull whoomphs of displaced air. The monster stalled for a moment, flapping its wings as another wave of dread slammed into Keith, pinning him in place. Then the monster attacked, a dozen jagged lines of purple lightning illuminating the night sky, ripping down through the air on a collision course with the frozen Keith standing helplessly in the middle of the clearing.
Tac tried not to laugh as the lightning rebounded off him, tearing into the monster with double the force of its attack. He burst out laughing when Keith used Ultimate Reach, illuminating the night sky with Doomfire Fury, a massive fireball exploding across the stunned monster’s chest, causing it to vanish inside said explosion as Keith squinted his eyes against the intense fire.
Normally, it would be impossible for him to reach a monster with a melee attack, but thanks to Ultimate Reach, an extra skill attached to Extender, he could hit targets up to 50 yards away and do it three times per day. Ancient’s Fury was a powerful skill, but to take a monster like this down, he needed a bit more firepower, which was where Doomfire Fury came in. It dealt fifty times the skill’s maximum damage and would cover ten times the area. The skill did considerable damage, but wouldn’t be enough to kill it. It was a Section Boss after all, and a Level 72 monster at that.
Still, Keith’s attack had been enough to shred one of its wings, which was what he’d been aiming for. He strode calmly forward as the monster appeared from the roiling cloud of flame, its body trailing fire as it screamed in agony, its left wing shredded and burned beyond recognition. Normally, the skill wouldn’t have been enough to cause that sort of damage on its own. Thanks to his massive list of damage bonuses against monsters, he’d inflicted the equivalent of four to six skill activations instead.
“Looks like it’s hitting on the six side,” Tac said as the monster crashed into the trees, branches stabbing into its damaged body as it crashed through them to the ground below.
The damage notification came an instant later, showing that the monster’s health was below half of its original.
“Is it just me, or does this seem too easy?” Keith asked as he drew the hammer with the crystalline head and glowing sphere making up its center.
“No, it’s definitely just you,” Tac said. “This is the hardest fight we’ve ever had.”
Keith strode toward the monster’s head as it thrashed on the ground, uprooting trees as it tried to right itself. The monster’s huge orbs fixed on him as he stepped into the air using Skyform, its pained screams turning into roars of anger that tore at his eardrums.
“Oh, be quiet,” Keith said, then swung the World Titan’s Meteor into its face.
The ground below the monster’s head cratered as it vanished in a spray of blood and gore. Trees were blasted away, and the ground rumbled and cracked as the wave of force flattened several more trees, while knocking over two dozen sideways.
Keith lifted the hammer as one side of the head connected to the glowing sphere, the lines going dark as one of the two daily strikes was used.
“I think that may have been overkill,” Keith said, noting the damage to the surrounding landscape.
“Eh, the monster’s dead,” Tac said with a mental shrug. “Nice of it to come to you like that instead of making you hunt it down.”
“Yeah,” Keith said, lowering himself until he was a few inches above the ground – there was blood everywhere, and he didn’t feel like tracking it into his carriage, even if his armor and the carriage were self-cleaning.
Finding the Essence wasn’t too difficult, despite its missing head, and he got a lot more than he had from the Raid Boss. He looted the corpse next, getting more materials, then turned and left. He could have gotten more if he’d stayed and carved up both bodies, but he had better things to do and more monsters that needed to be killed.
“At this rate, you’re going to put your own guild out of business,” Tac said as the engine roared to life.
“I doubt it,” Keith said as he slammed his foot down on the accelerator, the carriage leaping forward with a spray of dirt and blood. “There are always more monsters to hunt. When you kill one, there’s always another ready to take its place.”
34
Keith attracted more than a few looks as he walked into the guildhall, trailing blood and gore. More than one person stepped out of his way quickly, looking a bit ill as they caught a whiff of the stench. His armor was self-cleaning, but after plowing through a monster’s intestinal tract once or twice, the smell took a bit longer to get rid of. This wasn’t helped by all the gore clinging to him.
“Keith, what the hell?” Maylee exclaimed, appearing from the crowd and getting a good look – and smell – at him.
She nearly gagged as she recoiled, her eyes watering as she pinched her nose.
“Oh, you’re here. Good,” Keith said as a bit of monster fell off his shoulder and splattered to the ground. “You should probably come with me.”
“Can you at least go wash up before you do whatever it is you’re about to drag me into?” Maylee asked, her voice coming out strange due to her pinched nose.
