Collisa (Outsider Book 1), page 12
Dare genuinely wished for death on more than one occasion. And near the end of the night, when he was delirious from thirst and lost electrolytes, he actually spent several minutes holding a rock, tempted to smash himself in the head so he could spend the rest of the ordeal blissfully unconscious.
Thankfully his survival instinct prevailed, and he chose to endure the torment.
Just after dawn the cramps finally eased, his heaving stomach calmed, and he was able to sprawl on his filthy bedroll and pass out. He woke up around midmorning to guzzle some more water, in which he mixed a few pinches of salt he'd looted from a monster, and then he gratefully passed out again.
Not long before noon he woke up lucid and alert, if still feeling like shit. Which was also the stench that assaulted his nose in the close confines of the tent. Along with the queasy smell of vomit.
He dragged himself outside with a groan, and even though his limbs trembled with exhaustion and weakness got to work cleaning his clothing and gear.
After that Dare decided to move his campsite far from this one, and upwind. He also decided to look for a place near higher level enemies to hunt, since he'd been contemplating doing that for a few days now anyway.
So he shambled around packing his gear, avoiding spots he'd soiled in the night, and after what felt like forever gratefully left the place behind, not even looking back. Mostly because if he tried he'd probably lose his tentative balance and fall flat on his face.
He was so weak he could barely walk, and starving, but the thought of eating made his stomach heave. His character sheet showed serious stat debuffs due to illness, deprivation, and exhaustion, but the last vestiges of the tainted basilisk meat seemed to be well gone.
Dare managed to make it a mile closer to the river before collapsing, and reasonably decided that that would be his new campsite. He hadn't gotten that much nearer to stronger monsters given the short distance, and had no idea if this was even a good place to camp.
But he lit a campfire anyway and set up his tent. Then he climbed inside it and slept for another few hours.
When he woke up his stomach was rumbling, but with the more familiar and far less painful pangs of hunger. He gratefully dug into his pack for some of his highest quality dried meat and wolfed it down, along with some of his tastier and higher quality foraged foods.
He felt almost human again after the meal, and while his stomach gave a few unsettling pangs, he wasn't sick again.
After his ordeal he had no desire to try hunting anything, so he spent the rest of the day making and setting the new snares and making the better traps. He wasn't able to rank up to anything new in his Create Traps ability tree, but he looked forward to seeing how the snares did.
He ate a bit more food, then crawled back into his tent and slept until the next morning.
The next day was a busy one of hopping from one monster spawn point to the next, then camping the slime girl area to farm approaching monsters. Given his recent ordeal he didn't feel much temptation to go enjoy himself with the transparent women, but in any case he soon abandoned the area because monsters didn't seem to be interested in them either today.
Instead, as a last resort, he headed for the Mange Wolves. He was close to Level 5 now, and he wanted to try his hand at that stupid boar already.
He might've been in a bit of a bad mood after the wasted day.
Dare got lucky on the first wolf, critting twice and killing it even before it reached him at its increased speed. The second wolf was more of a challenge, although he was able to stay ahead of it enough to loose a few arrows and finally finish it up with his daggers.
He got lucky there, too, since the monster managed to catch his arm in its jaws, but it was on his bracer which mitigated some of the damage. Instead of his arm getting ripped open by those razor teeth he got a few nasty punctures and a large bruise on his wrist.
The third wolf, though, was the opposite of lucky.
It was one of the Level 5s, which was fine. What wasn't fine was that Dare missed a shot, something he'd been doing less and less as his proficiency with bows increased and he'd put more points into the skill.
Because of that, the wolf was still about half health when it reached him. He did his usual thing, sprinting to outpace its Lope and loosing an arrow when he'd put enough distance between them. And as usual it worked, although with the monster's higher health it took longer and was more dangerous.
As was proved when just after he loosed an arrow into the wolf's chest and was turning to sprint away again, he stumbled on a root and nearly fell.
By the time he recovered the wolf was almost on him, and it was too late to try to run. Too late to try to drop his bow and draw his knives either, for that matter. Instead, acting almost on instinct, he rolled desperately to the side, nearly dropping his bow in the process. The monster, clumsily skidding to a halt, took a few seconds to turn and charge him again.
Enough time for him to nock an arrow, draw, and loose at his enemy's head.
It was a critical hit in the wolf's eye, vaporizing the remainder of its health. Better yet, as the monster collapsed to the ground he heard the increasingly familiar triumphant army shout and saw the text bracketed by golden Hunter banners.
“CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE REACHED LEVEL FIVE!”
Below it was more text, “Free class ability unlocked: Roll and Shoot.”
Dare stared, then quickly pulled up his abilities to get more information. The ability was just what it said: swiftly roll up to 10 feet in any direction to escape danger, grabbing another arrow as he did so, and as he came back to his feet draw and loose.
The question was, had he unlocked it by reaching level 5, or because he'd actually done the ability in combat? He already knew he could unlock certain abilities by actually using them, and had realized it was going to require some adjustment to his thinking to find and unlock those.
And potentially some embarrassing attempts to do novel things while in combat.
On one hand, what he'd done hadn't exactly been that ability. And a lot of games gave abilities or better level rewards for reaching levels like 5, 10, etc. On the other hand, it seemed like too much of a coincidence.
Gah, Dare wished he had someone to ask about all this. He supposed he could try the villagers in Lone Ox, but since none of them were adventurers or actively hunted monsters anything they knew would probably just be common knowledge.
Still, that was better than what he had.
He would have to wait until Level 15 to be sure, but it opened the possibility that, just like every ten levels from level 10 he earned bonus ability points, every ten levels from 5 he'd earn a free class ability.
In the meantime, Roll and Shoot was the first ability he could use in combat that was active and had a cooldown, rather than some sort of passive bonus. And better yet, he was getting it just when it would probably be useful against that overpowered boar.
Grinning in excitement, Dare selected a spot 10 feet away and activated the ability. Immediately he threw himself into a roll, in the same automatic way as when he was crafting. A timer appeared at the corner of his vision with the text: “Roll and Shoot 30s”, the numbers counting down to zero when he presumed the ability would be available again.
Mid-roll, he drew an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to the string. And the moment he came to his feet he drew and loosed the arrow at a tree 10 yards away that he'd selected as his target.
The arrow missed, surprising him; was that just his lack of skill, or did Roll and Shoot have a penalty to accuracy? Dare checked the ability's details and saw that it did, one that increased with distance.
It was obviously intended to be used defensively against enemies that were right on top of you. And he was just fine with that; he'd been getting sick of running around like a lunatic fumbling for space for another shot when the enemy only had one hit left to die.
Dare had two points for Level 5: he put one into Bows 2 as an obvious choice. For the second one he was considering Forestwalk, although he was leery about putting a point in something that was limited like that; there were a lot of other terrains besides forests.
Then he noticed that the bite to his bracers in his earlier fight, which still had his hit points at 99%, had unlocked Leather Armor 1, which increased the damage mitigation of leather armor by 5%. That would be more useful than Forestwalk, and he planned to craft a full set of leather armor soon. It was tempting to toss a point in that.
But ultimately, after some consideration he chose to put the last point into Improved Bow Making, which made it so every new bow he crafted would have a fairly decent increase in quality. It had just become available with his new level, along with plans to craft a Level 5 bow. And none too soon; his Level 1 bow's damage was becoming less and less impressive with every level, and he had a boar to kill.
He'd debated the ability since he assumed that at later levels, he'd buy bows from professional crafters that were much better than his basic bow. Which would make this a waste of a precious point.
On the other hand, he really, really needed a better bow right now, and he was going on the assumption that the creators of this world's system had provided some leeway where people could waste a few points here and there without completely trashing their optimal build.
Dare hoped.
In any case, he could always make basic bows to sell. The lack of bows in the village meant people might be willing to buy them, especially if they were the highest possible quality he could manage. And he'd get new plans to craft a bow every 5 levels, which meant he'd be able to make basic bows no matter how high he leveled.
Granted, it'd be impossible to sell basic bows at higher levels in places like Lone Ox, where nobody that he'd seen was above level 15.
At the very least, his ability to craft bows also let him repair them, including crafted ones he bought. Improved Bow Making affected bow repairs as well, making them as effective as any bowyer's, so it would never be completely useless even if he got to the point where he never made another bow.
Either way, the point was spent; Dare just hoped he didn't regret it in 50 levels.
Now that he had the ability, though, he was eager to make an improved Level 5 bow that would really help him kill the boar.
Unfortunately, the materials for the new bow included things he didn't have on him. Including a few things that dropped from monsters around this level. So he had a choice between crafting it today or going after the boar.
He sighed and got to work finding materials.
* * * * *
Dare had never been away from his campfire at night.
He managed to get the materials for his new bow right around sundown, and had to sprint to get back to his camp before full dark.
It was a reasonable precaution, since different animals came out at night and a lot of them could be pretty dangerous, and he assumed the same applied for monsters. That, plus the fact that he wouldn't be able to see and would have a harder time knowing if danger was coming and have more trouble fighting it off, had decided him.
At some point he probably would have to go out at night. But he preferred to know more, and be better prepared, before attempting it.
Besides, he had the materials he needed to craft his bow. And he wanted to get a good night's sleep so he could be up bright and early in the morning to kill the boar and finish the quest.
Thankfully he encountered no wandering monsters this time, and reached his camp while there was still a glow on the horizon. Although his bow ended up taking until almost midnight to create, so he didn't get the early night's sleep he was hoping for.
The bow itself was beautiful though, at least to his eyes. Longer, better carved, better polished, with a nicer grip and a more tightly bound and springy bowstring. It did more than double the damage of his previous bow, and its other stats were better too. Especially range.
Better yet, the next morning when he crafted a dozen arrows to make sure he'd have enough for the boar fight, his Arrow Crafting skill ranked up and gave him Level 5 arrows. They didn't give him double the damage like the bow had, but it was a decent damage bump.
And a significant durability increase, probably because the better materials required included a harder type of wood and metal jags looted from monsters for the arrowheads. Which thankfully he had several of.
Given the pleasant surprises of his new level, it looked as if he'd need to keep Bow Crafting and Arrow Crafting up to his current level in the future so he'd be able to make upgrades as soon as they became available. At least until he could afford to buy better gear from crafters.
Either way, with this the boar fight would go from taking forever to taking an irritatingly long time. And that wasn't that bad.
Dare created the improved arrows, arranging them in his quiver so he'd use them first, then set out directly for the boar clearing. He reached it quickly, and after inspecting the boar again to solidify its information in his mind he began preparing.
He decided to perch between two branches in a tree for the fight; it was a great place to shoot a bow from safety at enemies who had no ranged attacks and no way to get up at him.
Which is why he was pretty sure it wouldn't work.
After all, if the people of this world could exploit such an obvious advantage to farm most of the types of monsters that spawned, they would. The world's system probably had some way to prevent it.
Maybe the monsters would knock him out of the trees, or knock down the trees, to get him on the ground. Or there were some games where if you attacked a mob from a place it couldn't reach, it basically became invulnerable until you moved to some place where it could attack you.
Maybe it was reckless to test what this world did about the potential exploit while fighting a boar that was twice as tough as any other monster of that level. But even if Dare did get knocked out of the tree, shooting from up there might give him some extra shots. And his Fleetfoot would help get him safely to the ground.
And if worst came to worst, he had his new Roll and Shoot ability to keep him away from the boar's tusks. Sure, the 30 second cooldown might make things a bit dicey if the boar was able to keep up with him, but he'd make it work.
Dare also planned to put down all of his spike traps.
At first he'd considered it broken that you could lay down as many traps as you wanted, which in most games wasn't allowed for balancing issues. But then he'd realized that if hunting a monster represented an investment of time, and creating traps represented an investment of time, then it all balanced out.
Of course the traps made hunting safer so you weren't as likely to die, but on the other hand they took a lot of time to make given the paltry damage they did.
If anything, he'd be better served using his time to farm gold so he could buy a better bow and arrows and do the damage that way.
At least his snares were actually doing something; he'd caught a rabbit and a rock chuck in them. Which were pretty humble finds considering he could go out and shoot a deer or pig or other large animal any time he wanted. But it was a start.
It would be nice to find a higher level Hunter if he could, though, to tell him if Create Traps was worth investing any more time into. Along with a slew of other questions.
Dare spread the traps in front of the tree he'd chosen, then climbed up to his perch and unslung his bow. His hand was steady as he pulled out one of his better arrows and nocked it, taking aim at the big animal across the clearing.
“Please don't let this kill me,” he whispered. It was becoming a habit before every difficult fight. One that he should probably consider breaking before he joined up with other people, if he ever did.
He held his breath and loosed.
And missed by a few inches, his arrow thudding into the ground.
Dare bit back a curse, waiting to see if the boar would react. He'd missed first shots on a target before, and it was a tossup whether the enemy would notice and aggro him or ignore it completely. He wasn't sure whether there was a situational awareness roll or if it depended on how close the arrow was, or how much noise it made, or how close he was to his target, or what.
Thankfully, this time he got lucky; the boar glanced over at the arrow, then snorted and got back to rooting around the base of a tree.
Instead of grabbing one of his ready arrows, he drew one from a quiver in his backpack. Then he took aim again and hit the boar right in the side, in or near its vital organs.
The big animal squealed and charged the tree Dare was in, while he began plucking his ready arrows and loosing off more shots. He did it perfectly, no fumble or delays, but even so his target's health bar went down in what felt like tiny chunks.
The boar was still at around 60% when it hit the spike traps, which dropped it down to 40% in a matter of seconds. But it didn't so much as stumble from the damage as it continued forward and slammed into Dare's tree.
He cursed and hugged the trunk just in time to avoid being thrown to the ground as the branch beneath him shuddered violently. As soon as it settled he fumbled for another arrow to get a second shot off, but before he could the boar backed up a few feet and slammed the trunk a second time, forcing him to get cozy with the tree trunk again.
The boar hit the tree again, then again, giving him no chance to get in a shot.
Okay, was this the mechanism the world's system used to prevent farming monsters from inaccessible locations? But at best it was a stalemate, not allowing him to act while the enemy was also locked in place.
And while he'd eventually have to eat or drink or sleep, the boar faced the same issues. Better yet, it drained its stamina every time it slammed the tree; would it eventually drop from exhaustion?
Another time tradeoff? You could hunt the monsters from the safety of some high place, but you'd waste so much time doing it that it wouldn't be worth the effort?
The boar slammed into the trunk below again, but this time there was a sharp crack and the entire tree lurched violently. Then, with a deep groan, the entire thing began to fall.
