We Hunt Monsters, page 29
The monster turned, its three sets of eyes fixing on them, and a loud gonging sound echoed throughout the mountain range. Keith winced at the volume, noticing a timer appearing in the corner of his left eye as soon as it did. It was counting down from sixty minutes. Sola’s three mouths opened, and a multi-toned roar shook the mountain range, instantly slapping Keith with several debuffs.
You are terrified: -25% to all stats for 2 minutes
You are deafened: You cannot hear for 2 minutes
You are intimidated: -50% to focus for 2 minutes
Armor down: Armor reduced by 100% for the next 30 minutes
Damage down: Damage reduced by 50% for the next 30 minutes
“Double-poop,” Keith muttered as Sola, the Triblaze Wyrm, went on the attack.
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Keith stumbled back, trying to focus through the haze of his debuffs as the monster opened its three mouths and attacked, beams of red, blue, and purple fire blasting out and tearing through the air.
Keith couldn’t hear anything, of course, but the explosion of dirt, rocks, and snow as he dove to the side told him that it had probably been very loud. Thankfully, he somehow managed to avoid all three beams, and after seeing their effects, he was extremely grateful he had.
The red beam had melted the ground to boiling slag. The blue had frozen it solid, and the purple had left a bubbling pool of smoking acid.
Keith scrambled to his feet, his mind refusing to focus as he stumbled into the side of the cliff. He staggered back and was lucky he had, as a blast from the purple head melted the wall an instant later.
He shook himself, trying to make his brain work, only for something to slam into his side, knocking him to the ground. He squinted up, and through blurry vision, saw Cayla’s face, looking paler than ever and covered in blood. Some of her hair was missing and smoke rose from the back of her head.
She half-turned, then looked back to him, her eyes wide and panicked, then latched onto his shoulders and rolled them both to the side. An icy boulder slammed into the ground, shattering in a storm of icy shrapnel, and this time, Keith couldn’t avoid taking the hit.
-12 damage
-17 damage
-24 damage
-11 damage
From a single blow, he’d taken a lot of damage. His brain could not focus on doing the math to know how much it was exactly, but Keith knew it had to be bad. Cayla continued rolling them, the two of them picking up speed as the ground shuddered beneath them. They slammed into a wall, where Keith felt a sharp pain in his side, followed by another damage notification.
“Up!” Cayla mouthed at him, dragging herself to her feet.
Keith stumbled upright, cursing the life-threatening debuffs as Cayla yanked him out of the way of another attack. This time, a lance of purple ice struck the cliffside, shattering and sending bits of ice-covered acid shrapnel everywhere.
A bit sliced across his cheek, and Keith felt burning pain as another damage notification flashed before his eyes.
-16 damage, you have received an acid burn
-3 HP per second for the next 7 seconds
“Curse all of these debuffs,” Keith yelled, then let out a whoop when he actually heard the last part of that sentence.
In the same instant, his vision cleared up, and Keith felt the lost strength flood back into his body. Now that he could properly see and hear again, he could really be terrified when he saw that the monster was right on their tail.
Cayla was still hauling him along, apparently having miraculously avoided some of the debuffs, seeing as she’d managed to keep him moving the entire time.
“I’m good, thanks,” Keith said, pulling his arm from around her shoulder and continuing to run on his own.
“Do something,” yelled Cayla yelled.
“Yes, do something!” Bob echoed as the cliff above them exploded in a bright red flash, burning bits of stone raining down on them.
“Bob, what the hell are you doing here!?”
“There’s nowhere to hide,” the monkey screamed, sounding on the verge of full-blown panic. “You need to slow that thing down, or we’re all dead!”
“How do you suppose I do that?” Keith snapped back, throwing a look over his shoulder and trying hard to instill some sense of calm and rationale.
“You have a spell scroll,” Bob yelled. “Use it!”
“It won’t do nearly as much damage as it should-” Keith began.
“The debuff only affects you, not any items you might use,” screeched the monkey.
In a blink, Keith had removed the scroll from his inventory and broken the seal.
“Now what?” he asked as the scroll unfurled.
“Just point it at the monster,” said Bob.
Keith did just that, letting go when the scroll pulled away from him to float under its own power. It shot off into the sky, hovering above the monster, who paused to track it with one of its heads, while the other two remained focused on him and Cayla.
The monster suddenly skidded to a halt, letting out a multitoned roar as it seemed to realize what the scroll was. However, by that point, it was too late. A ball of silver flames blasted from the scroll, engulfing the monster in a storm of fire as it expanded outward.
“Run, you idiot! Run,” Bob screamed. “Spell scrolls don’t discriminate.”
Keith listened wholeheartedly, grabbing Cayla’s arm and running for dear life as the sphere of burning silver rapidly expanded to the full scope of its area of effect. Thankfully, there had been enough space between them and the monster that they managed to escape, and Keith half-turned to see the effects of the scroll.
A storm of star-shaped blades rotated in a counterclockwise sphere. Every second, hundreds of the blades would glow white, then violently explode, ripping into the cliffside, the monster, and ground all around it.
The blizightning storm still howled all around them, but its anger was nothing when compared to the fury of the scroll. Much to Keith’s surprise, damage notifications began to flood his vision, so much so that he asked Bob how to hide them.
“I can do that for you,” Bob said, sounding slightly less panicked. “But we need to keep moving. That scroll won’t kill it. Hell, it’ll barely slow the thing down.”
“Let’s keep moving then,” Keith agreed, pulling a stamina and healing potion from his inventory and swallowing both.
The HP he’d lost during the attack was restored by fifty, while his stamina began to rapidly fill, the yellow bar ticking up in increments. He was saving his better healing potions for a real emergency but took one of his middling re-stamina potions so that he would continuously recover it for the next one-hundred seconds.
“How much time did that buy us?” Cayla wheezed, pulling a yellow potion of her own and chugging it as they ran.
“Bob?” Keith asked.
“Most likely between thirty and sixty seconds,” the monkey said. “I’ll let you know as soon as the damage notifications stop coming.”
“We need to find somewhere to hide then,” Cayla said, all of her earlier greed and enthusiasm about getting bonus rewards well and truly gone.
“That monster’s got three noses,” Bob snapped. “We can’t hide.”
“What we need to do is set a trap,” Keith said. “Something that will slow it down for a bit longer than a minute.”
“But what can we hope to do in the little time we’ve got?” Cayla asked.
“I didn’t see any wings,” Keith replied, doubling back on the path down the slope and picking up speed. “That means it’ll need to smash through the tunnel to reach the other side. That should hopefully buy us a few minutes to do something.”
“The damage notifications have stopped,” Bob warned, and a moment later, Keith got a notification.
Total damage dealt: -22,712
Sola is bleeding.
Sola is burned.
Sola is enraged.
The echoing roar of the monster was more than enough proof of that. Throwing a look up and over his shoulder, Keith could see the three-headed monster glaring down at them. Dark blood coated its scaled hide, and large patches were missing from its back and tail.
All three heads opened their mouths simultaneously, light welling in their throats, and Keith got a very bad feeling.
“We need to find cover right now,” he yelled as the light streamed outward, collecting before them and condensing into a single, massive sphere.
“What the hell is that?” Cayla screamed.
“If I had to guess, that would be Colossal Triblaze,” Keith said. “An AOE that’ll burn, poison, and freeze everything in a hundred-foot radius.”
“How can it do all three?” Cayla asked.
“It’s a monster,” Bob said. “Now is not the time to ask questions.”
Keith skidded to a halt at a fault in the cliffside, then ripped his hammer from his back and swung with all his might.
“Help me,” he said panickily, as up above, the sphere grew to a diameter of twenty feet before slowly starting to shrink.
Cayla’s scythe whipped out, cleaving down and shearing away a section of the rock. Keith’s hammer slammed into the wall several times more, then he grabbed Cayla and shoved her into the indentation before he joined her.
Three weak armor potions landed in his hand as he pulled them from his inventory. He wasn’t sure if it would make any difference, but he chugged them all, raising his armor to seventy-five – it was still at a base of zero, thanks to the Armor Down debuff – then used Steelstance, raising it by a further twenty-five percent.
Keith was just in time. The sphere condensed down three feet, and the monster unleashed its attack.
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The tricolored beam tore downward, ripping clean through the zigzagging path, before hitting the ground below in a colossal explosion. Keith braced himself as the backwash of burning heat, freezing cold, and hazy purple mist blasted back up toward them. Immediately his health began dropping, and he frantically pulled one of the middling recovery potions, downing it and watching his HP tick back up.
Below, the landscape turned into a molten cesspool before freezing solid once more. Purple acid tore up the sides of the cliff, eating through the stone and sending massive chunks tumbling to the ground below.
“Are you two alright?” Keith choked, not having the room to turn in the small crevasse to see how they were doing.
“I’m alive,” Bob wheezed.
“Still breathing,” Cayla groaned.
Keith checked his HP, which was slowly dropping, only to jump back up as the potion did its work.
“Good, because we need to keep moving,” Keith said, pulling himself from the crevasse and eyeing the ground below.
He had no idea how they were going to escape through the tunnel now, with all of that stuff blocking their way, but there had to be a way out. This monster was way too strong for them to take on their own, and according to Bob, the system always gave a chance to escape when odds were this stacked against someone.
Sola let out a snort of anger as it saw them emerge from their spots, but instead of immediately attacking, it turned to head down the path after them. It seemed that this was the chance they were being given.
“Alright, we’re going to have to move quickly,” Keith said, his mind working overtime to try coming up with a way out.
It didn’t take long for him to think of a plan. After all, they’d used something similar just the other day.
“The lake,” he said, starting to run down the path again, having to leap over the two-foot gap that Sola’s attack had carved out of the cliffside.
“You think we can sink this monster in the lake?” Cayla asked, sounding very out of breath.
“Don’t you have any stamina potions left?” he asked, throwing a look over his shoulder.
Cayla shook her head.
Keith pulled two of his middling stamina potions from his inventory and tossed them to her.
“Make them last. We’ve still got a lot of running to do.”
Keith’s stamina would drop far slower, and he’d be able to run a good deal faster, thanks to his Ranger skill. However, Cayla would not have that same luxury and needed them more.
A roar from above caused them to flinch, and it was a good thing they did, as the side of the cliff was suddenly painted in purple fire, leaving a bubbling, scorching mess in its wake.
“You probably won’t want to touch that,” Bob said, eyeing the bubbling puddles of oozing acid.
“Yeah, I wasn’t planning on it,” Keith said, jumping over the puddle and continuing to run. Only this time, he was keeping half his attention on the monster, swiftly making its way down to them.
“Why doesn’t it just jump down?” Cayla asked as they soon noticed that the monster followed the path instead of taking the faster way down.
“Wyrms – with the exception of wind wyrms – are land-based monsters,” answered Bob. “In short, they hate heights, so you can believe that they’ll want to avoid things like a multi-hundred-foot drop.”
“It’s afraid of heights?” Keith asked, thinking that a monster like that shouldn’t be afraid of anything.
“Yeah,” Bob said. “But don’t think that gives you an advantage when it comes to actual fighting. As you’ve probably noticed, it’s been attacking a lot. It tends to become enraged easily and stay that way when in high-up places. The only advantage it really gives you is when it comes to running.”
“You don’t say,” Keith said, coming up with a crazy idea.
A roar from above caused him and Cayla to press their backs to the cliff as blasts of red and blue fire flashed by, not even coming close to hitting them. When they dashed away from the cliffside, Keith was clutching his rope in his hands, working on an intricate slipknot.
“Hold on tight,” he said, then leaped forward, snagging Cayla around the waist and carrying them both off the side of the cliff.
She screamed as the two of them plummeted to the ground below, but Keith barely noticed, staying focused on the small knob of stone he’d spotted from up above. They passed it in a flash, and Keith hurled the rope, the loop neatly catching on the knob and arresting their fall. Keith felt his neck snap forward, his chin slamming into his chest and the taste of blood filling his mouth, but he’d managed to pull it off.
They hit the end of their rope just moments after, but Keith kept a tight grip, even as his shoulder screamed in protest and a damage notification flashed before his eyes.
-38 damage
They swung forward, momentum carrying them back to the path, where Keith released the trembling Cayla and began tugging on the rope. A couple of seconds later, the slipknot came loose, and it dropped back down, where he caught it and began coiling it around his shoulder.
“That should have bought us a few more minutes, but we need to keep moving.”
Wham!
Keith’s head spun to the side as Cayla’s fist connected with his jaw, stars popping before his eyes as a damage notification flashed.
-8
You are concussed: -90% focus for 12 seconds
Keith stood there, swaying back and forth, trying to cover up as best he could and expecting another attack. Finally, the ringing in his head stopped, and he was able to focus once more. He turned to Cayla, who was practically shaking in rage.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she threatened.
“You do realize that we’re in the middle of a life-or-death chase, right?” Keith said, working his jaw from side to side. “What I did gave us a chance to live. If you had any common sense, you would see that.”
Cayla raised her arm, her anger intensifying and clearly intending to take another swing at him.
“Hit me again, and I’ll break your legs, then leave you for the wyrm,” Keith said, his voice taking on a dangerous edge.
“You’re sick,” Cayla said, pausing with her arms raised.
Clearly, she was taking his threat seriously.
“No,” Keith replied, his voice hard. “I’m someone who’s practical. What I just did gave us time, but your dramatic overreaction could have cost us all our lives. Now, you either pull yourself together, or I leave you behind. Make your choice.”
Keith didn’t wait for her reply, running past her, leaping the final gap and turning a sharp corner onto the ground before the tunnel. Cayla would either follow him or not. At this point, she was more of a liability than anything else. He wasn’t going to risk his life for her again, nor his chance of having a life with his parents and siblings back on Earth.
A roar got his attention, and after looking, Keith estimated they had gained around three minutes with the stunt he’d pulled. Now, he just needed a path forward.
“See anything?” he asked, his eyes flicking over the pool of bubbling death spread before them.
“I think there might be a way across,” Bob said, sounding worried. “But I don’t know if we can make it.”
Keith’s Discerning Eye highlighted their escape route in bright purple. Bob was right. It was extremely risky.
“We can make it if the two of us work together.”
Keith half-turned, seeing Cayla behind him.
“We can,” Keith agreed. “The question is if you’ll trust me enough not to land us both in the pool of death.”
Cayla’s jaw clenched as he said that, but thankfully, the woman managed to keep her cool.
“I’m sorry for reacting the way I did,” she ground out. “I was just taken off guard by what you did and reacted without thinking. It won’t happen again.”
“Great,” Keith said, tossing her one end of the rope. “You’re going first.”
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