Accidental Champion of Earth - Chapter 24 - Sharp Claws And Dagger-Like Fangs

As much as Xavier appreciated Howard pushing him on, he wasn’t sure how long the other three would be holed up in that cabin. He hoped it would only be a few hours, but if it was longer, then they would definitely need something to eat.

So he withdrew a few things from his Storage Ring that he’d managed to pilfer from the cafeteria, plopping enough food and drink onto the ground to get them through the day without having to go hungry.

Siobhan smiled with a shake of her head. Justin’s eyebrows shot up. And Howard, a cop, appeared to be pointedly looking away from the tray of donuts.

Once he left the three of them with something to eat while hiding in the Safe Zone, Xavier turned and left, thoughts turning through his mind. They’d barely been walking for a few minutes from the cabin, but he hadn’t seen any sign of any other monsters.

Is another one of those Black Pumas stalking me? he wondered. And will all the enemies be level 10? Will they be lower, higher? He sighed. One way to find out.

He figured the best way to find the enemy was to make as much noise as possible. Though, of course, the party had already managed that with all the talking they’d done.

Xavier started with a jog. Then, moments later, he was sprinting through the trees. As he ran, he focused on his steps. On his technique. He had been running a lot for the past few days, yet he hadn’t gained any Skill Quests, yet he’d seen that Running, like Staff Mastery, was a skill.

I wonder if Justin has gained a Sword Mastery skill, as he was an Olympic fencer before all this. And could Siobhan gain an Unarmed Combat skill?

Xavier, however, didn’t get a lot of time to practise his running technique before he was attacked again. He heard movement in the dark trees to his right. Now that he’d been out of the cabin for a little while, his night vision had adjusted quite well, and the moonlight filtering through the canopy above was more than enough for him to see by.

Another Black Puma. Xavier grinned. He’d already reached the end of his cooldown for Spiritual Trifecta, and he’d gained more than enough Spirit Energy from the last kill to refill what he used.

Crack.

You have defeated a Level 10 Black Puma!

You have gained 1000 Mastery Points.

You have gained 1000 Spirit Energy.

The Black Puma went down instantly, just as the first one had. This time, Xavier had seen its vertically slitted eyes widen as his staff had come down to crack its skull. He almost felt bad for the beast, which was clearly outmatched, but he knew he couldn’t let any feelings of sentimentality into this process, not if he was going to clear this floor fast enough.

Three members of your party have entered the Safe Zone. The Safe Zone timer begins now.

Once the Safe Zone timer reaches its end, you and your party will either be ejected from the Safe Zone and never permitted to return, making you and your party unable to exit this floor until it is cleared, or you and your party will need to exit to the Staging Room.

A timer counting down from twenty-four hours appeared in Xavier’s vision. He dismissed it, but had the sense that he could recall it quite easily if he needed to. That will give me an idea of how long this is taking, he thought.

He wondered about the text that had shown up. If clearing this floor took more than a day, the others would have to leave the Safe Zone, or they would all have to leave the first floor. At least, that was his understanding of it.

If all the Safe Zones on other floors have the same time limit and restrictions, it will be very difficult to carry them through other floors. He got the feeling they could only gain a reward for the floor if they were in it when it was cleared. Good thing they’ll be staying in the Staging Room, like Siobhan said.

He quickly deposited the Black Puma into his Storage Ring before standing tall and straining his ears. Doesn’t sound like there are any more around here. Then again, it’s not like I heard the first two before they came for me. Who says I’ll hear the next one?

Xavier sighed and started running again. He didn’t focus on running silently. Quite the opposite. In fact, he started stomping down ever more heavily across the forest underbrush, crushing twigs, sticks and branches underfoot. Crumpling leaves and kicking stones, scuffing his cheap leather shoes across the ground, hoping they would last him. This definitely won’t earn me a Skill Quest.

As he ran, he summoned the countdown timer, wanting to try something out. He knew that some video games let you alter the HUD, or heads-up-display, moving information across a screen wherever one wanted. He knew this new reality wasn’t a video game, but it had sure worked a lot like one so far.

After a moment, he managed to will the countdown timer to appear in the corner of his vision. It was out of the way, and he was sure it wouldn’t bother him during a fight. But it was also easily in view if he ever wished to look at it.

Two minutes past when he heard footsteps padding across the forest floor to his left. He glanced over, saw another Black Puma running toward him. Looking at how fast it was running, the puma seemed to be slightly slower than him.

I could kill it in a second. Or… He thought about how many more Mastery Points he needed, and also the fact that he needed to clear this level as fast as possible. If it takes an established party a day, or three, to clear this floor, that could be because the Black Pumas are spread out far and wide through the forest. That was assuming there weren’t othermonsters around this place—and he knew that there would still be a boss for him to find.

He thought all this through as the Black Puma trailed behind him. Xavier kept glancing over his shoulder and listening intently to the beast bounding through the underbrush, hoping it wouldn’t lose interest in him when it realised it wasn’t able to catch up.

It takes a normal party from a world like mine at least a week. That’s probably not just because there’s a lot of ground to cover, but because they would need a lot of rest and recovery between each fight. A level 10 monster would no doubt be able to grievously wound someone only at level 4. If they survived, they would need time to heal, especially if they didn’t have access to food. And they wouldn’t have as much Toughness as me.

Xavier smiled, the idea coming to him as the Black Puma showed no sign of ceasing its chase. If I keep running through the forest, gain more and more of these Black Pumas aggression and have them chase me, then take them all down at once as fast as I can, it will be far faster than me stopping each time. And I probably run faster than almost anyone at my level, and everyone else doing this will be level four.

The only way someone would have more Speed than Xavier at his level would be if they had started with a good amount, then added all their free stat points at each level into it. That, or they had been able to gain a lotmore than him by training naturally, like he’d done in the hallway. Though he got the feeling there must be a limit on how many attribute points someone could gain from that kind of training.

At least, I hope there is. Because if I’m wrong, there could be people way stronger than me at the same level who don’t possess any titles at all.

It wasn’t a thought he liked having, so he pushed it away, sure it couldn’t be true.

After roughly two and a half more minutes, Xavier heard another Black Puma begin chasing him. When he looked over his shoulder, he now saw two of the monsters on his tail. He couldn’t help but smile and laugh. His running hadn’t faltered since he’d started. He wasn’t sweating, breathing heavily, or feeling tired at all. Of course, it had only been a few minutes, but he wondered how long he might be able to run like this…

Just as he’d guessed, another two and a half minutes later, and a third Black Puma was chasing him.

They appear evenly space out through the forest, though I wonder how many directions they’re in. So far, he’d been following what appeared to be a rough path through the woods. According to Little Red Riding Hood, he should have been safe as long as he didn’t stray from this path. But so far, that didn’t seem to be the case.

Are all the enemies across this path? That seems… a little easy. Did he just have to keep running, then he would eventually have every Black Puma following him? Did it take a week for a normal team to fight each one of them because they were so weak and slow, having to regain health between every fight, and not running from one monster to another? That’s probably why more established parties can manage in it a day, by speeding from one encounter to the next.

If he was right about how the floor worked—with all the Black Pumas spread across the same path, with some sort of Boss Puma at the end—then all he would need to do was keep running until he’d gathered them all. Or, at least, until he’d gathered as many as he figured he could deal with at once.

I imagine the other floors will be much, much harder than this one. Then again, fighting a bunch of level 10s—even if only one at a time—would be very tough for a normal group of level 4s. They’d become a really solid team by the end of it.

Maybe that was part of what this floor was about—teaching the party to work as a team against foes stronger than them. If that was the case, then he was doing it ass backward by soloing it. Not that he minded.

When Xavier had ten level 10 Black Pumas following behind him, enough to gain him another level, he figured it was time to stop and fight. He might feel invincible from how he’d handle the first two, but he didn’t really know how many he could handle all at once, and he didn’t want to get into as much trouble as he did when fighting those eighteen Lesser Goblins.

He might not be so lucky if he did something like that a second time.

Xavier steeled himself. He was confident he could take all the Black Pumas down, he just didn’t know how difficult it would be. He whirled around and saw ten massive black cats all bounding at him at once, all coming at him from the same direction.

Their booming roars sounded loud in the air, as loud as thunder cracking the sky. It echoed off the ground, off the trees, through the forest. Xavier wondered if the rest of his party could hear them all the way back at the cabin.

Seeing all that powerful muscle, those sharp claws and dagger-like fangs, Xavier swallowed and wondered if this plan had truly been as smart as he’d first thought.