DD1 ASC - Chapter 28 - Fight

It was a cool, cloudless afternoon amongst the foothills of the Dragonspine Mountains, and the clear blue skies were promising yet another chilly night after the sun had finally set. Where the cold air would once again ‘force’ them to snuggle together for warmth inside their small hut, not that Typh wouldn’t want to do that anyway, but it was always nice to have an excuse to let her get close while she was still supposed to be angry with her. Arilla wasn’t sure how she felt about Typh, the attraction was still there to be sure, but that was never in any doubt. Just looking at her full red lips made Arilla feel her own part in anticipation of a kiss, but it was everything else about the short mage that was the problem. She shook her head to clear her thoughts, for this was hardly the time for introspection, not when she had a monster to kill.

"Are you sure that you're ready?" Typh asked warily, the look of concern on her face indicating that she thought Arilla was anything but, despite her numerous statements to the contrary. Although in fairness, given how her thoughts kept wandering, perhaps the small mage had a point.

"Yes, for the last time. Let it loose," Arilla found herself saying, the heady mix of nervous energy causing her voice to rattle as she tightened her two handed grip on her sword. The brightly glowing runes on her zweihander’s ricasso indicated that the enchantment was fully charged and ready to go regardless of it having already seen so much use throughout the long day.

She spared a moment’s thought for the sword that Typh had enchanted for her; it was by far the most expensive thing that she owned, the prettiest too. With the runes uncovered, she was free to marvel at the flowing blood-red script that was so unlike the neat runework that she had seen dotted throughout the wealthy parts of Rhelea. Like everything that Typh did, her runes were similar to what she already knew and found familiar, but somehow more. Her spells, her touch, her laugh, it all felt energised in ways that she found hard to describe.

Arilla felt her class grumble with frustrated anticipation as Typh hesitated yet again. The seconds ticked by as the woman carefully inspected her posture, stance and gear for any sign of obvious imperfections before finally nodding her assent and cut the flow of mana to her spell. Immediately the thick chains of golden light that held the beast back winked out of existence. The dire scorpion took only a moment to adjust to its newfound freedom before lurching forwards and scuttled across the glassy floor in a headlong rush towards Arilla, who was waiting for it on the other side of the pit.

The pit in question was nothing more than a sunken depression in the ground, some 30 feet deep and 50 feet wide with rounded walls forming a near perfect circle. Typh's spell that had excavated the pit had left the sides and the floor smooth like glass. The sedimentary rock was turned igneous from the extreme heat and pressure of her spell. It was only through extensive practice that Arilla was now able to traverse the smooth terrain without losing her precious footing, and the dire scorpion lacking that practice struggled to move forward at speed. Its eight arachnid legs were more of a hindrance as they failed to find suitable purchase on the glassy floor.

The monster was larger than her, its sleek and well-armoured body closely hugging the ground as it half ran, half skidded forwards. Its twin pincers were snapping at the air menacingly as it rapidly closed the distance between them. Each one of its massive claws was large enough to easily encompass her slender waist. The knee-high weapons forced her to angle her guard awkwardly towards the ground to better defend her legs whilst its barbed stinger hung aloft high in the air high above her head.

Arilla hated fighting scorpions, and by now she had fought so many. Their armoured carapaces were resistant to the sharp edge of her sword, and their body shape was completely unintuitive for her to fight against. The creature kept forcing her to defend from attacks at the twin extremes of height. The monster attacked her the same way that dire scorpions always did, a mad rush to close, followed by a probing strike with the stinger, and then staggered attacks with its two pincers before it tried it all again. Rinse and repeat. For all of its superior size, strength, and speed, it truly was a mindless creature, unable to learn and utterly beholden to its preprogrammed instincts.

The monster's barbed trail flickered forwards, trailing a thin line of thick inky venom through the air and shooting towards her eyes. She resisted the urge to flinch or blink, instead spending 1 stamina on [Sworn Blows] and she batted away the attack with the flat of her sword, her strength surging to superhuman proportions as the enchanted steel of her blade met chitin.

The dire scorpion was strong, much stronger than her. As Typh had told her many times over, she should always assume that monsters physically larger than her were also her physical superiors, unless she had a heavy level advantage or was able to use her compounding stat-boosting skills. The power behind the tail’s thrust was immense; had she used the edge of her sword, then she would have risked having her weapon ripped from her grasp if it got caught between the fast-moving segmented plates, but with the quick blow from the flat of her blade Arilla was able to nudge its path just a few inches to the left as she stepped forwards and reversed her swing.

She fed more stamina into [Sworn Blows], cancelling out the momentum of the first attack as her skill-reinforced muscles strained against her tendons and brought her sword back down. She quickly adjusted the grip of her offhand onto the blunted ricasso, moving her fingers and partially obscuring the bright red glow emanating from the arcane runes carved into the metal. Swinging with her hips, she brought the edge of the zweihander down in a powerful two-handed sweep. The fast-moving sword blade cleaved deeply into the wrist joint of an extended pincer. She had sunk 10 stamina into her attack, practically tripling the force behind her sword. The runes on the ricasso dimmed slightly as the enchantment cut through the dire scorpion’s defensive skills, her empowered strike continuing on unimpeded through the thick layers of chitin and muscle, severing the limb at the joint.

As usual, the dire scorpion didn't react at all to the loss of its left pincer. Instead, it continued with its assault undeterred. While it was streaming thick ichor from the fresh stump its other pincer grabbed Arilla by the knee and squeezed, while at the same time its tail was coiling back to strike forwards for the second time.

Once again, she tried to parry the attack with the flat of her blade, but the pain from her knee caused her to falter. Her sword clacking harmlessly off the scorpion's chitinous tail as the barbed stinger punched through the chain links of her mail coat and penetrated deep into the vulnerable flesh of her breast. The stinger was still embedded deep in her chest, visibly pulsating in front of her eyes as it filled her veins with its deadly poison. All at once, her nerves screamed out in agony as her HP plummeted, while the serrated edges of its claw began to quickly slice through the muscles of her knee.

Golden light flashed before her eyes, and the dire scorpion immediately stilled for a moment before it fell to the floor in its component pieces, neatly separated at every joint. Its ichorous blood held back as if in shock at the sudden trauma before finally rushing to escape as it pooled outwards on the pit’s glassy floor.

*Congratulations, you have defeated a level 17 Dire Scorpion, experience is awarded.*

Typh was beside her in a heartbeat, her small brown hand pressed firmly against her blood-covered chest as the mage pushed her mana into her. Arilla could feel the foreign—yet by now familiar—energy painfully scour the poison from her veins. It was no healing magic; she was sure of that, because she felt her HP fall even further as her blood literally boiled the contaminants from within her.

"You did better this time, but you're still making the same rudimentary mistakes," Typh said disapprovingly.

"I know, I know, I have to dictate the flow of battle," Arilla said through gritted teeth as she willed herself not to scream.

"You say the words, yet you still choose to fight it head-on. It's stronger, faster and better coordinated than you in a straight brawl," Typh said as she carefully placed both of her hands around the barbed stinger still lodged inside Arilla's chest. "Are you ready?" she asked.

"Yes, I'm re—" she said, her words cut off mid-sentence by her own screams as Typh roughly pulled the barbed stinger out from her breast. The poisonous organ did far more damage on its way out than it did on its way in, shredding muscles and skin as the hooked spines on the stinger pulled her flesh with it.

"Don't be a baby. You've been through worse," Typh said, chastising Arilla for her show of weakness.

She grunted, for it was all that she could muster with her current level of coherence, breathing a long sigh of relief as Typh placed a hand back on her chest and began healing her wounds.

Arilla felt a surge of warmth spread throughout her chest as Typh’s spell efficiently restored her tortured flesh back to its previous uninjured state. She opened her eyes and grimaced as she watched her accumulated injuries begin appearing on Typh, the mage’s knee and chest haemorrhaging blood as her flesh peeled open grotesquely to reveal torn muscle and exposed bone underneath. Where her skin still remained intact, spidering red veins were spreading out across Typh’s chest, mirroring where her spell had burnt the poison out of her.

Arilla wanted to look away, to close her eyes and focus on the fact that with the dire scorpion dead, that she was now incrementally closer to level 13, but she couldn't. This was part of it too. The injuries on Typh’s body proof of her many failures. Had the mage been a little slower with her intervention, then Arilla would have died to a mindless insect. It would be a more horrifying experience if it was the first time that she had seen this, or if these were the worst set of injuries transferred between the two of them, but it wasn't, and as she had done so, so many times before Typh bore the gruesome injuries that would lay Arilla out on the ground in stoic silence.

"Most insects struggle to turn as quickly as bipeds can. Next time keep your distance until you can attack from the sides or the rear. This pit works to all your advantages and none of theirs. Do better,” she said, seemingly unconcerned by her magically transferred injuries.

"Next time? When can I move on from insects? I'm tired of ichor and exoskeletons," Arilla asked, desperate for a break from the painful monotony of the dire scorpion fights.

"You can move on when you can kill a scorpion without crippling yourself. Insects are easy; they’re predictable and stupid. Animals are harder, and the monstrous races—as you call them—are even harder still," Typh said in her lecturing tone.

“As I call them?” Arilla asked, raising an eyebrow at Typh’s curious turn of phrase.

“Don’t change the subject. You need to do better,”  Typh said.

"Fine, are we at least done for the day?" she asked.

"For the afternoon at least. I need a few hours to recover, but you've levelled today, so you can practice grinding your skills while I rest," Typh said before turning around and limping back towards the rope ladder leading out of the pit.

They had made their camp deep within the western foothills of the Dragonspines, sufficiently far away from Rhelea so as not to be accidentally discovered by any passing adventuring teams. Typh had carefully chosen their location to be far from the better known passes leading into the mountains proper or any of the territories known for the more valuable and popular monsters to hunt. The campsite itself consisted of a small mud hut made from magically sculpted soil, a fire pit where they cooked their meals, and of course, the fighting pit where Arilla battled the monsters that Typh was catching for her. All of this was surrounded by a ring of sparsely distributed fence posts made from smooth grey stone with red runes glowing softly along their lengths. The carefully crafted enchantment on them kept any unwanted monsters at bay. It was spartan in the extreme, completely lacking in creature comforts aside from the minor luxuries that they had managed to bring with them. A bag of salt, a bar of soap and a hand mirror, that was it. Everything else they had carried with them only had some form of practical value.

Arilla felt like she was a giant bruise inside and out. Typh was not a healer, and while she knew enough magic to mend her wounds, she did so by taking them on himself. It was a distressing act that left Arilla feeling as emotionally exhausted as she was physically. Successive battles in the pits had taken their toll on her gear, as she barely even had armour any more. Her mail shirt now consisted more of patched holes than it did intact chain links. Her sword was spared the same treatment only by its powerful protective enchantment.

If it wasn’t for her most recent rank up to [Sworn Strength], then she would feel much more vulnerable by this turn of events, but she had gained a powerful defensive ability in the form of flat damage mitigation from ranking up the skill that was only limited by its low level and the weight of metal she could carry in pounds. Fighting giant scorpions made it hard to gauge precisely what 9 HP worth of damage mitigation looked like, but so far, she had figured out that she was essentially immune to minor cuts and bruises so long as she was touching her heavy steel sword. The skill would continue to grow, and someday, she would be able to shrug off a dire scorpion's barbed tail with as much ease as she could now ignore stubbing her toes. That day was a long way from today though, and right now, her whole body ached from manaburn after being so very thoroughly saturated with mana from Typh’s pseudo-healing.

Every day Typh would walk away from camp before dawn and return hours later with a dire scorpion in tow, always in the same tier, higher levelled and physically larger than her. Arilla would fight it, and when it died, she would inch closer to the next level, although that didn't necessarily mean that she was winning her bouts. More often than not, Typh would step in at the last minute and save her from certain death. It was depressing and demoralising, but it was a wake-up call, one that she was grateful to receive in the controlled conditions of the pit rather than in a true life or death struggle.

As a person who had grown up being taken advantage of by those in positions of power over her, the allure of a strength-based build had proven impossible to resist. Still, she was learning one defeat at a time that she would never be able to physically overpower all of the monsters that plagued Creation. Arilla didn't regret her choices though; already, she was revelling in the feeling of power that she got from her high strength score. She could feel the impact of every point now, how her muscles were empowered far beyond what they should naturally be capable of, and a small part of her mourned for every human out there who was denied the opportunity of gaining a class. Together her skills [Sworn Service] and [Sworn Strength] combined with her stats gave her an effective strength score of 26, making her almost twice as strong as she had any right to be, and when she swung her sword with [Sworn Blows] she could push it all the way up to 70 for the duration of a single swing.

As instructed, she practised with her zweihander, cutting down imaginary scorpions as she spent stamina to fuel [Sworn Blows], leaning on [Sworn Strength] and [Sworn Service] to let her move her heavy weapon with an ease that belied her still-growing muscles. Her skills were steadily falling behind her level, the former requiring exponentially more time to increase whilst the latter simply required higher levelled foes. It was a growing weakness she would likely be able to rectify, if only she wasn’t so tired from being healed all the time.

They had been in the foothills for a week, and Arilla had already levelled to 12, averaging just under a level a day. She knew her training would only get more challenging and that at some point she would have to fight monsters of a higher tier, but for now, she tried to enjoy the feeling of her own steady growth. It was a fantastic levelling rate, only made possible by repeatedly duelling monsters significantly stronger than her multiple times per day. It wasn't what she expected when Typh agreed to power level her, but she couldn't deny that the lessons, whilst painful, were worth it.

*Congratulations Sworn Service had reached level 10*

Name: Arilla Foundling

Species: Human

Age: 18

HP 276/280

SP 7/280

MP 210/210

Strength 8

Dexterity 3

Vitality 8

Intelligence 1

Willpower 1

Charisma 6

Class: Sworn Sword Level 12

Sworn Blows level 11

Sworn Service level 10

Sworn Strength level 9

Hours after the fight, she dropped her sword to the ground, the runes on her zweihander worryingly dim. She fumbled for it with numb fingers and aching muscles before giving up, instead electing to lie down on the smooth floor slick with her own sweat. She closed her eyes and felt the sweet allure of well-deserved sleep pulling at her when she heard Typh’s voice.

"If you're done slacking off, dinners ready," she called out, sounding half-serious, her head peeking out from over the edge of the pit.

Arilla opened her eyes and was shocked to realise that it was dark, the light of the cooking fire barely visible from the bottom of the arena. She found her sword by its red glow and made her way up the ladder and towards the increasingly strong smell of food. The night was as cold as the day had promised, and she hurried forwards to take a seat by the crackling fire, feeling the warm flames chase away the chill that had seeped into her bones from her time spent lying on the floor. Typh was busying herself around the firepit, and judging from the pungent smells intermingling with the burning coals, their dinner was going to be the same thing that it always was. She took her seat on the flat rock that served as her chair and looked down in disappointment when Typh handed her a plate of grilled meat.

"Tell me this isn't what I think it is," Arilla groaned.

"It isn't what you think it is," Typh responded, earning herself an impetuous glare from Arilla.

"It's dire scorpion,” she complained, already feeling her stomach rebel at the thought of forcing more of the sour tasting meat down her throat.

"Well, I wasn't going to waste it," Typh said, looking scandalised at the thought.

"It's disgusting."

"It's mana rich meat. You need it,” she said, pushing the plate into her hands.

"But…"

"No buts. When you finally kill a scorpion properly, you can maybe get meat from an animal with a proper circulatory system," Typh said with a wry smile.

Arilla looked at her, at how good she looked. The major wounds that Typh had taken upon herself had vanished over the course of only a few hours. An absurdly fast healing rate for someone who lacked healing magic, Typh had told her that her health regeneration was tied to her mana, but even so, that implied an equally improbable rate of mana regeneration if she could recoup hundreds of points in mere hours.

"You look good," Arilla said earnestly.

"No I don't. We both look and smell terrible," Typh responded with a snort, grinning as she knew that she was right.

Even with Typh’s ridiculous health regeneration rate, the constant influx of injuries had done its damage to their clothing, if not their bodies. They were both disgustingly filthy; while Typh could effectively heal them both, she was unable to do anything about the copious amounts of spilt blood that had irrevocably stained their limited supply of clothing. Stains which had first set in days ago, had by now dyed their clothes a disgusting reddish-brown. Their attire more closely resembled something that a butcher might use to mop up a particularly large spill.

"If this keeps up, we're going to need to cut this short just to get new clothes. We look like something out of a horror story," Typh said.

"I don't hate it. It makes me feel like some kind of savage warrior woman," Arilla said, smiling goofily as she flexed a bicep melodramatically.

"You are a savage warrior woman; the caked-on blood is just gratuitous," Typh said mockingly.

“I am not a savage!”

“Please, I’ve seen how crude you get when you’ve had enough to drink.”

“That’s the wine! I would never do those things sober.”

“Really? I’m pretty sure you’d enjoy a re-enactment without all the liquid courage,” Typh teased, causing Arilla to turn crimson, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. "So I'm thinking of maybe doing something a little different tomorrow,” she continued.

"Are you going to finally let me go up against a kobold?" Arilla asked, the thought of fighting the small humanoid creatures filling her with a kind of nervous energy. Kobolds were largely regarded in adventuring communities as ‘the next step up’ from goblins, and she had been fighting giant insects in some form or another for so long now. She was beyond tired of staring into vacant expressionless eyes as she fought them, it wasn’t the prettiest thought, but she couldn’t deny how much more she enjoyed killing monsters smart enough to show their fear.

"Your bloodthirst astounds me sometimes, and no, that kobold village is strictly off-limits for you. I was thinking more of a day trip away from camp. We need to shake things up a bit as I'm starting to worry that maybe the pit fights aren’t working," Typh said, her words shattering Arilla’s half-formed fantasies of battle and sending a spike of panic at the thought of losing out on the experience from her monster duels.

“What do you mean they aren’t working? I’m gaining the levels, aren’t I?!”

“Yes, you are getting faster and stronger, but I fear that’s more down to your growing skill levels than anything else. You’re getting sloppier with your fights when you’re supposed to be getting better; with the way that you’re going, it’s only a matter of time before you take an injury that I can’t fix,” she said gravely.

“It’s not that bad.”

“It is. You’re just inured to the pain, which was not the point of this training.”

"Well, what then?"

"It's a surprise. Trust me; you’ll love it."

Arilla stilled. Trust. Did she trust Typh?

Arilla often told herself that she did, that whatever secrets the mage kept she would get over them if it meant that they could stay together, but she knew that she was confusing her desire to trust her with the actual concept. Typh had saved her, of that she was certain. Without her appearing in Arilla’s life, she would have almost certainly died alone trying to fulfil a bounty which was scarcely worth a handful of chalkoi. Instead, she was strong, both in class and in body. Typh was right as usual. Her steady diet of monster meat had changed her. A few weeks ago, she was starving, barely getting by on the charity of strangers, but now, she had her own strength in every aspect of the word.

Where once her ribs had featured prominently beneath her sallow skin, now her body was covered in lean muscle with a healthy glow of vital life about her. Her breasts and hips, which had never really been present before, had grown alongside her new strength, and she had gradually transformed from an emaciated street rat into a true warrior worthy of her own songs. If she was completely honest with herself, she no longer needed Typh. With her sword and her levels, she could easily earn enough to support herself. She could find a full team, and with other people to lean on, it would be a simpler, easier life as an adventurer, but she knew that it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted to be with her. She just prayed to the Gods that she could live with whatever Typh’s secret was when it finally came out.

"I trust you," she said. The lie passed smoothly on her lips as she looked back into Typh’s gold flecked eyes.