Chapter 89

Luke sat next to Zea by a small campfire and tried to pick the tufts of hair out of the flanges of his mace. Normally it wasn’t a problem to clean it out, but his latest kill had hacked up some sort of glue-like snot ball at him, which he’d batted aside with his mace. And now everything was sticking to it.

“God damn it,” he said, giving up and throwing the mace down into the dirt. “Whatever this shit is, it’s not coming off.”

Zea ignored him while she worked. What exactly it was she was working on was a mystery to Luke, but presumably it was going to help her fight. He’d carved a piece of wood, hickory he thought, into a stick about an inch thick and had done his best to smooth it down before handing it off to her. She’d then started carving little squiggles and symbols into it, an action which apparently took a great deal of concentration.

“Can I borrow that thing you have?” she said suddenly. “The one that makes the light come out of the crystal at the end?”

“The flashlight? Sure. One sec.”

He dug around in his bag until he found it sitting all the way in the bottom and handed it over. Zea pushed down on the little button and shook her head when the bulb lit up. “Amazing. Just like that, and anyone can use it. No training required. Here, hold it right here for me please.”

He held the flashlight while she spun the stick around several times and studied it intently. “I think I’m done. One way to find out though.”

“You never told me what it does,” Luke said.

“It redirects mana into physical force, up to ten feet away. Watch.” Zea’s eyes unfocused in a way that Luke had come to learn meant she was looking at the supposed mana that was everywhere, even though it was invisible and untouchable. It wasn’t too outlandish to him, but it was kind of like having someone tell him they could see radio waves or electricity. Sure, there were things to measure that, but eyeballs weren’t one of those things.

Then she jabbed the stick forward and a little furrow scored the ground a few feet away from her. It was the same thickness as her magic stick, and only as long as her jab had been. “Oh, that’s cool,” he said. “So you can use this to reach things that are too far away. Could you do something like this on a glove and then use it to pick up stuff you can’t reach?”

“Theoretically, I could. But I don’t know how. Some enchanter can and probably has made it, but I won’t be doing it myself.”

“So what’s this good for then?”

“Stabbing monsters in the eyeballs, mostly,” she said.

“You’d need to get awful close to do that though.”

She nodded and set the stick down. “It’s a problem. I’m going to work on the range though. A wooden stick is not a great medium for the spell either. This is probably only good for at most twenty uses before it snaps under the strain.”

“You should probably just stick with the crossbow for now,” he told her.

“The crossbow sucks. I hate it.”

“I could try to reduce the stock size for you.”

“Ehhhh, let’s not modify it until I have a working alternative. I hate it, but it does work, and I’d rather not have to go stand in front of the monsters like you do, without any armor even. You’re fucking crazy.”

“It’s not like I don’t want armor!” Luke protested. “I’ve tried, several times! It’s kind of hard to loot it off somebody who was wearing it when I keep breaking it in the process of killing them. And you said we didn’t have the time or money to buy new stuff.”

He’d relied on [Life Surge] a lot over the last few days to patch him up if a fight went sideways, which happened with some regularity. He was fighting all sorts of new monsters now, with abilities and tactics he hadn’t figured out yet. Mistakes were frequent, but food was also readily available, and he’d prioritized staying in good condition so that injuries didn’t snowball in the next fight. So far, it was working.

“How close are you to the next level?” he asked.

“About 500. You?”

“1000 or so.”

“That’ll be enough AP to upgrade [Mana Manipulation]or [Cadence]. I’ll do [Mana Manipulation] first since it works with my enchanting too. After those two rank ups, I think I’ll be ready to try the ritual.”

Luke nodded. They had two shots at it, and that was basically it. If neither attempt took, the only way they were getting supplies to try again was to backtrack all the way back to Kazos. Admittedly, they could hit a road and cover all the distance they’d meandered north in less than a day, but neither of them were keen to go back there.

“How are you doing on bolts?” Luke asked. He’d done his best to recover the ones he could, or at least to retrieve the metal tips, but it wasn’t always possible.

“Full-ish quiver, but they’re pretty much all ones you made. No offense, but they just don’t fly as well without the fletching.”

He’d tried to carve the shape in, hoping that would help. It was debatable whether or not he’d been successful. As long as she managed to get a shot or two into the monster though, she generally got credit for helping and an equal share of the total XP. So while the shots might not be all that damaging or helpful, they still accomplished their goal.

If she could come up with some enchanted stick that let her contribute real damage, he was all for that. It would make the fights easier for him, plus he’d feel better about her being able to defend herself if something went wrong. It helped that, so far at least, her attempts took nothing but time. He’d seen the bag of raw materials she’d purchased, and most of it looked expensive.

“Maybe we should buy some spares next time we stop somewhere,” he said. “Or at least a few more tips, just for when we can’t recover them.”

“I’d rather not. I do not like the crossbow. I’m not looking to invest more into it.”

“Could always increase your strength and agility and get you a bag of pebbles. Do you know how to make a sling?”

“No,” Zea said flatly. “And I’ll pass on that one anyway.”

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

“Kind of, but I know you don’t mean anything by it. It’s just kind of a stereotype. ‘Oh look, it’s a dwifkin village. They’re too poor and stupid to craft anything. Haha. They’re all hunting with sticks and bags of rocks.’ It’s not true, hasn’t been true for hundreds and hundreds of years, but people are assholes.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he said.

“Not your fault,” she said. “But if you want to make it up to me, you can cook dinner tonight.”

Luke side-eyed her. “How is that making it up to you? My cooking is awful.”

“I’m sure you’ll get [Cooking] any day now.”

Luke doubted that. He’d tried repeatedly, using her instructions, and calling the results edible had been generous. Somehow, it was almost worse than when he’d just skewered a piece of meat on a stick and left it to char over the fire. Zea had watched him cook one night, then confessed afterwards that she had no idea how he’d messed up so badly, that everything looked fine while he was doing it.

“How about you cook, and I’ll do the clean up?”

“That’s what we do every night,” she complained.

“I know. It’s a good division of labor. We both get a decent meal, and you get to relax after dinner.”

“Nope, nothing doing. You cook. Get that first rank in it already.”

“Ugh. Fine. I’m going to burn yours extra crispy tonight.”

“Don’t you dare!”

* * *

Luke’s eyes snapped open in the middle of the night and he reached out to grab the mace sitting next to him. Weapon in hand, he scoured the darkness for the source of whatever it was that had woken him. It hadn’t actually made a sound, but he could feel it lurking nearby, studying him.

Zea was snuggled up tight against him, an arm and a leg thrown over his body. Luke gently rolled her onto her back inside that bear-skin rug she called a blanket, and slowly climbed to his feet. He cocked his head to the side and listened for some sound besides the chirping of crickets. Nothing.

Something moved in the tree branches overhead, just a brief flicker. It could have been a trick of the wind, just a branch shifting, but he knew it wasn’t. There was something out there, something with enough XP in it to tickle his brain, something that was very, very good at hiding. It was probably small, and very fast, looking for the perfect angle to ambush him.

Even if it didn’t attack, he knew he wasn’t getting any more sleep now. Some predator had marked him as potential prey and was just waiting for the right moment to strike. Luke couldn’t even go look for it without leaving Zea vulnerable. He could wake her up, but she wouldn’t be able to defend herself effectively.

“System, I don’t suppose you could tell me what this is I’m feeling?” Luke asked, already knowing the answer.

“I’m afraid not. I cannot disclose information about other creatures.”

“How about a general idea of a monster that lives in this area that’s small, fast, and hard to spot.”

“There are a number of possibilities.”

“Narrow it down to ones that hunt at night by themselves for me.”

“A phase flicker spider fits your profile most closely. Other options include candle bearers, vanta panthers, and night creepers. This region also has a higher-than-average population of burrow wasps, which would fit all possibilities except for singular hunting patterns.”

“Okay, great. What can you tell me about phase flicker spiders?”

“They are on average about a foot in diameter, not including their legs. They are active almost exclusively at night, and can camouflage themselves in moonlight so as to be almost completely invisible. They rarely attack anything bigger than themselves, however, as their paralytic venom loses much of its efficacy when scaled up against heavier opponents.”

So it wasn’t likely to be a whatever spider then. “What about the other candidates? Which ones will attack humans? Or dwifkins?”

“All of them,” System said.

“Okay. Uh, panthers and wasps. Right. What were the other two?” Luke turned in a slow circle while he questioned System. The feel of the monster’s XP hadn’t gone away, but he couldn’t get a glance at it. He was kind of doubting it was a panther, not unless he’d only seen a limb move or they were the size of house cats.

“Candle bearers are a classification of gremlins. They feed primarily on the eyeballs of their victims, and are known for their stealth capabilities. It is very rare for anyone to spot one prior to them attacking, which they do by igniting a bright light that blinds an opponent just before they strike.

“Night creepers are a type of insect that could fit in your palm. Their stings are venomous and cause hallucinations. While their victims are incapacitated, they begin burrowing through the chest cavity to feast on various organs and lay a clutch of eggs behind.”

“Too big to be one of those then,” Luke said. “How big is a gremlin? Like, could it be less than a foot tall?”

Even that was stretching it. Whatever flash of movement he’d seen was probably seven or eight inches, but he wasn’t dismissing that it might be a limb moving through a patch of moonlight. He was barely more than guessing at its size.

“Gremlins on average are about two feet tall, and candle bearers are a small sub-species that averages twenty inches.”

“Shit, what is this thing?” Luke asked. He nudged Zea with a foot to wake her up. At her groan, he said, “We’ve got something watching us. You need to wake up.”

“Wha-?”

There was a flash of movement from his right, and then something traveling a hundred miles an hour struck him in the chest and threw him off his feet.