SB: Chapter 182 – Harren The Desperate

AN: This note will be removed, when chapter replaced with edited version.

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My Danger Sense grew. We were working our way through the chambers on the 1st layer. I was having Lanner fight with everything but his wands. I wanted him to work on his other skills. I could also work on soul skills while watching him along with Ozy.

“Lanner, behind me,” I said and drew my sword. Ozy finished off the last monster easily. Lanner quickly retreated behind me as I turned towards the tunnel the danger was coming from.

Out of the tunnel stumbled a gaunt and sickly looking man I hadn’t expected. It was Harren and he was still wearing his armor and carrying his axe, but he looked tired and gaunt. Hunger was clearly effecting him heavily.

The reason he was on the 1st layer was something no adventurer wanted to talk about. If one couldn’t exit, the best way to survive for food was on the first layer. The monsters had the least Mana, but it was still heavily damaging to one’s soul and body to consume them.

“Harren,” I said as he stared at me.

“Justin?” he rasped out as a question.

“Yes. I didn’t expect to run into you, but I suppose anything could happen. The beastkin killed Stormy,” I said.

“You know? How?” he asked.

“I snuck into the beastkin settlement for food. Found an enslaved human they were keeping for food and freed him. There is soul damage that made him short, but I am training him up. Lanner, this is Harren. A former teammate. Our team broke up once we became siloed into this section of the dungeon,” I explained.

It was a lie easily seen through, but Harren was weak and tired. He was starving to death as his body tore itself apart. I tightened my grip on my blade.

“You know what I want. I can’t go on,” he declared.

“And my spatial pouch is only so big. I could be stuck here for years, and I am not going back to that beastkin settlement if I can help it,” I countered. He nodded at this. There could be no compromise unfortunately.

In the end a fight would happen regardless as the food decreased. What I had was everything I was going to have until I left this part of the dungeon. While it was cruel to refuse him, I had to put myself first. That was a lesson that had been hammered into my head constantly by the people training me.

Taking on Lanner would cut by food supply by a third, since he ate less than me. The 5,000 fists of food, the unit of measurement the beastkin used, would be reduced 3,333 fists for me since I consumed one per day. That was a decade. That left me more than enough time to find a solution to leaving this part of the dungeon.

Cutting that in half would reduce my time to 5 years instead of 10. That was too great a risk. While I had hope that I would find a solution quickly, it would take a long time to level up soul skills and train up more. All in the hope of creating a soul skill based off of them to track back a cursed skill.

In fact ten years was too short for what I wanted to accomplish. And as the food became less tensions would increase. Harren could easily attack me while we rested to take the food for himself. Lanner was too weak to hold his own in this kind of fight.

“Let my family know I died fighting,” Harren said. I gave him a nod of respect as we readied ourselves for a fight to the death.

“Ahhh!” he let out a roar and rushed towards. I had my wand hidden behind the hilt of my sword. I shifted my left hand to flick out my wand. I set the tier 4 Explosion at him.

“Lightning Beam. Lightning Beam. Lightning Beam.”

I immediately followed it up with a heavy barrage of spell skills. When the smoke from the Explosion spell skill cleared, Harren had a gaping hole in his armor, as blood gushed out. His body was locked up from my Lightning Beams.

Ozy swooped in behind him and wrapped around his neck while using Empowered Bight to rip out his throat. There was no quarter, no mercy given in a fight to the death. Harren was a skilled combatant, if he got a chance to act.

If he had been at full strength he could have dodged in time and used his weapon and spell skills to counter mine. Unfortunately, his reserves were low and his soul was damaged. He was nothing but a shell of himself.

Ozy let go of his neck and flew up behind him as Harren staggered forward. He let out a gurgle of blood and then collapsed dead on the ground. I let out a sigh. I hadn’t even needed to fight in close combat.

I checked his corpse from a distance with my sensory skills. He was definitely dead. I let out a heavy sigh. Walking forward I reached his corpse. I began to strip his corpse of his armor and equipment. He had a spatial pouch as well. There were lots of cores in it and other basic traveling supplies, but no food.

Once his corpses was stripped I stepped back and Ozy used Alchemy to create a flammable substance over the corpse. I then used Fireball to set it alight.

“What was that?” Lanner asked. “Wasn’t he your friend?”

“He was a friend. I liked him. Harren was good with his axe and a capable close range fighter. He was brave, courageous, and loud. But he respected strength. May his soul find peace wherever it may go,” I said.

“But we have food?” Lanner asked.

“You are naïve. We have no way to get more. He is not in our team. Betrayal would happen eventually. Settling things now like this was for the best. If he regained his strength, then the fight would be much closer and far more dangerous,” I replied.

Lanner didn’t say anything else as Harren’s corpse burnt to ash. I was just left with a feeling of melancholy. That was the last member of my original team. I had hoped that Harren had found a way back. I knew it was highly unlikely, but I had held out hope. Now he was just ash in the dungeon, soon to disappear.

I would tell his family he died fighting beastkin if I ever met them and return the axe he carried. While we were no longer a team when he died, it would be rude not to let his family know what happened. I held his adventurer plate. I put it away in his spatial pouch, my spatial pouch now.

“Let’s keep moving. You can clear more caravans today,” I said.

“You sure? Um, well,” Lanner clearly didn’t know what to say or understand what had happened.

“We are continuing. Dwelling over the dead is not productive. If I wanted to think of the dead, I would think of my mother. Now let’s go before we start growing roots,” I said.

Lanner took the lead as we made our way to the next chamber, not the one Harren had come from. Magical slimes, which meant he would have to use Fireball, his only spell skill to hurt them. At least I had insisted he preserve Mana unless he absolutely needed to use a spell skill.

It was something that even I had trouble truly internalizing. It wasn’t the one battle that normally killed an adventurer. It was the countless fights where you got weaker over time. And then one fight surged in difficulty and the adventurer couldn’t match that level of combat and died.

For the rest of the day I just thought about Harren and didn’t practice my soul skills. My heart wasn’t into practicing more. When we stopped for the evening, I made Lanner cook. If he got the benefit of me using a Clean spell skill on him he could cook. Thankfully he didn’t argue. My overwhelming display of force had probably terrified the gnome.

The stew was decent, but the vegetables could be cut more evenly. “Good job,” I said.

“Thanks,” Lanner said hesitantly.

“If you have a question, ask. Don’t look all mopey and worried. It is annoying,” I said.

“Will we fight with everyone?” he asked.

“Anyone in this part of the dungeon. Most likely yes. There are only beastkin and demons. Neither of which are friendly. Once we get back to the Eldarin Continent, then you can experience a change of pace. But until then, it is unlikely to meet anyone or anything that is friendly,” I said while thinking of the gnomes. But with the curse skill, I couldn’t mention them outside their settlement.

“I won’t let you down. I will work hard,” Lanner declared with fake enthusiasm. He said the right words, but I knew his heart wasn’t in the right place. In time that might change, but he was like me from a young age. Determined and hopeful, not realizing the full weight of being adventurer.

I suppose someone might go their entire life fighting monsters in the dungeon, but eventually something would happen. An Abnormal, other adventurers, a surge of Mana, something would test the adventurer.

There was no such thing as killing monsters to become a legend. I had gotten past the points of basic fights. They no longer worried me. It was the new, the unexpected, and the challenging situations the dungeon threw at me that would threaten my life.

“All done?” I asked Lanner and he nodded. “Clean.”

It really was the most useful spell skill of all time. Learning that alone, made things far more comfortable and easy. Without that spell skill, going into the dungeon would be miserable. I had experienced that misery first hand and never wanted to go back.

Sure, it might waste some Mana but being comfortable while resting would improve the regeneration of my reserves and put me in a better mindset for whatever combat. Or those were things I told myself to justify the Mana cost.

I slowly pulled off my armor and carefully inspected it. While I had used the Clean spell skill, checking everything to understand the damage and do minor repairs every day was important. Letting one’s equipment go would see an adventurer become like Blood Gore, a former supreme legend. Running around the dungeon naked except with a spatial pouch on one’s hip.

While I didn’t mind running about naked, I didn’t work to get armor skills to fight without an extra layer of protection. I didn’t depend on my armor, but it was there to mitigate area of effect attacks for the most part. Anything directed or more powerful, I needed to dodge or block with a spell skill.

Trying to block with armor was a bad idea, which I had been reminded about constantly. Armor was not a shield or something one should count on. The risk of a catastrophic failure was too high, either by the armor failing or an attack attacking a weak point on the armor.

It wasn’t just my armor, I also checked my clothes and did minor repairs and patch jobs where needed. While I didn’t have a Sewing skill I could get one if I wanted. Not that I had the spare Mind stats for such a useless skill.

I didn’t need my stitches to be perfect. They had to work and hold things together for as long as possible. While I had spare clothing in my spatial pouch, it had to last me for the next decade. That was how long my food supplies would last. If my clothing broke down at that point, I would be more concerned about the food situation than clothing.