emergencycomplaints

Duskbound 2- Chapter 36

The two hunters stared down at the body, which was itself a crushed, bloody slab of meat. The [Beast Tamer] had avoided the worst of the damage with his magical barrier, but enough of [Dread Lance] had slipped through to kill him. Bits of skin were still stuck here and there, but most of it had been torn away.

“That looked like it hurt,” Torwin said, a strange hitch in his voice. “Who was he?”

“No idea. He said he wanted that c...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 35

The man’s bracer crackled with power and a translucent pane of glass materialized in the air in front of him. Velik’s spear struck it, sending cracks spider webbing across its surface. They sealed back up as quickly as they’d spread, leaving the pane whole and almost invisible once more.

“Aggressive,” the man noted casually, like he hadn’t just been the target of a brutal attack. “I bet that’s served you well hunting monsters. They’re not hard to outsmart, and too much...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 34

Meeting a bear that was twice his height and ten times his weight in a straight charge wasn’t going to end well. Regardless of any differences in their physical stats, Velik wasn’t going to check a creature that size with raw strength. As the gap between them closed and lightning crackled around the monster’s teeth, he did the smart thing and changed direction. Predictably, the bear’s massive paw—bigger than Velik’s skull and with six-inch daggers for claws—lashed out to cut him...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 33

It wasn’t too often anymore that Velik worried about dawn coming on him in the middle of a hunt. Most days, whatever he was fighting wasn’t strong enough for it to make a difference. But in this case, with only an hour or two left and his prey’s strength still a mystery, he wanted every advantage he could get. The ghostwalker cat hadn’t been close to strong enough to challenge him, but there was no telling if that was the most powerful monster his attacker had at their disposal.

Duskbound 2- Chapter 32

It should have been simple. Jensen was a [Vault Seeker]. He could literally close his eyes and point to unclaimed valuables just waiting for someone to come pick them up off the ground. But his father didn’t want him going out into the wild lands. It was dangerous there, with powerful monsters and deadly traps lurking in old, forgotten ruins where all the best vaults waited.

So he’d blocked Jensen’s efforts. First it had been keeping him from getting funding. Then...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 31

Jensen’s brilliant decision was that Torwin and Velik would escort the mercenaries back to King’s Crossroad for imprisonment and trial, which was promptly shot down by all the more experienced members of the team. Velik wasn’t particularly interested in doing it in the first place, but it was nice to have some solid reasons backing up the decision he’d already made.

“Splitting the group after we were just attacked is a terrible idea,” Torwin said immediately.

“Not to...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 30

“You’re hurt,” Sildra said, her voice almost accusatory.

“It’s nothing,” Velik said. He was surprised she’d even noticed.

“Doesn’t look like nothing.”

“It’ll be healed up by tomorrow, and the cuts aren’t that deep.”

Giller, Torwin, and Jensen were questioning the bandits, having divided the group into thirds and pulled them far enough apart that they wouldn’t overhear each other. That left Aria, whose hair was tousled and eyes still gritty...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 29

A few dozen more arrows rained down through the darkness, but before they could strike the half of the team that were just now groggily waking up, Gilder reached up a hand overhead. A surge of… something… pulsed out, detectable in every piece of metal Velik was wearing jumping in place, and suddenly the entire volley was veering off to the side to pincushion the ground around their camp.

“Go,” Torwin ordered. “Leave them alive if you can.”

Velik didn’t need to be tol...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 28

It took the better part of a week to reach King’s Crossroad, and Velik visibly chafed at the slow speed by the end of the second day. Neither Aria nor Sildra had invested anything—or in Aria’s case, not enough to matter—into physical, which meant they both wanted eight hours or more of sleep and frequent breaks throughout the day. Though in fairness to Sildra, it was more Aria who demanded they stop every hour or two, at least until Giller had started mocking her for it.

The hor...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 27

The first fight didn’t happen until shortly after noon. Velik and Torwin were doing a wide circuit paralleling the road at Torwin’s insistence, something Jensen insisted was completely unnecessary but which both hunters had agreed they’d be doing anyway. Velik had the south side of the road to Torwin’s north, and he was appreciating the time to himself. Being around other people was draining, and the last few months had only made it worse.

He didn’t know what to say or how to ...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 26

By the time Velik and Torwin returned to Cravel, everything else had been taken care of. Supplies had been purchased, paperwork had been obtained, and horses had been rented for the group. Velik had declined his, not having the slightest bit of experience with riding one of the animals. Torwin likewise preferred to run on his own two feet, and as the beasts were barely past level 10, could easily keep up with them.

They met up on the east road leading out of the city. Velik was the firs...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 25

Torwin let out a satisfied groan as he stretched out in the hot spring. The water was doing wonders for his sore muscles with each passing minute, and the only way the experience could be better was if he’d had a cool mug of beer to toss back while he soaked. Unfortunately, Heldsmouth wasn’t the kind of place with high-end enchanting, and as tempting as it was, five thousand decarmas for a cup that could keep whatever was stored inside it at the same temperature just wasn’t worth it. 2025-02-05 14:36:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Duskbound 2- Chapter 24

Aria sat on one side of the table, a spread of sugary treats separating her from Velik. She idly picked at a pastry with a fork as she considered his request. “It’s a bit forward, don’t you think?” she eventually said. “We really don’t know each other that well, and what you’re proposing requires a great deal of trust between everyone involved.”

“More so on our side than yours,” Velik argued. “What’s to stop you from taking the treasure and teleporting away? It m...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 23

Jensen was shown into Bertrim Nelspir’s office two days after Velik got his gold pin. He’d been eager for the meeting, as the expedition was planning to hire on twenty silvers, thirty bronzes, and three golds, maybe more if whatever area Jensen picked proved to be more dangerous than average.

It was an appreciable chunk of the guild’s manpower and would impact how many jobs they could reliably handle, which was why Bertrim had been dragging his feet on getting an answer back to Je...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 22

The summons to appear before the guild leadership was every bit as miserable as Velik had expected it to be. He was harangued by various pompous instructors and department heads, praised for absolutely nothing, and had his abilities and tactics called into question repeatedly in an attempt to get him to justify himself. Velik had some vague suspicion that it was mostly done to get him to reveal his full skill set, something nobody was required to furnish the guild with.

But, at the end ...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 21

Jensen walked past the cat house three times before he worked up the nerve to actually go inside. If anyone he knew had seen him entering Melon and Peach, he’d die of shame, but of course this was where Velik was staying. Somehow. Did he have something against a normal inn? How did he…

Trying to imagine what kind of conversation his socially awkward partner had been forced to endure with the matron was too much for Jensen. He snickered as he walked in, drawing a scowl from ...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 20

The two of them were in the carriage, riding back to Cravel and discussing the state of the guild, to which Aria would be giving her recommendation that Velik be raised to the rank of gold. Just because she’d evaluated him as ready to take on gold jobs didn’t mean it would actually happen, however.

Unsurprisingly, Aria wasn’t any more of a fan of the guild’s political games than Velik was. She didn’t like getting caught up in them and she didn’t have anything good to say abo...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 19

“I cannot believe you pulled that off,” Aria said flatly while holding out a massive glass jar she’d pulled out of seemingly nowhere.

“I told you I could,” Velik said, though in truth having to find that particular organ blindly had been a chore. He’d pulled out… he wasn’t even really sure what organs they were, but half a dozen of them were settling into the muck around the corpse before he’d finally gotten the right one, evidenced only by the system notification info...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 18

The book learning portion of Velik’s training as an iron-ranked monster hunter hadn’t been especially helpful. It made sense that the bestiaries focused primarily on low-level threats, as those were what the trainees would be expected to handle upon their graduation to bronze. He’d dutifully learned how to recognize them, how to track them, and their strengths and weaknesses, for what it was worth. The simple truth of the matter was that Velik didn’t need to be clever or skilled to ha...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 17

When he’d started his trip through the swamp, Velik had been essentially blind in the water. The smells were overpowering, the sounds were all new and unknown, and of course he couldn’t see a damn thing through the layer of scum coating the black water. Actually being underwater was even worse, at least at first.

After a few hours, he’d started to figure things out, though. It wasn’t about sight or sound when he was down there. It was touch. Specifically, it was feeling the wate...

Duskbound 2- Chapter 16

The bed was lumpy and it stank, which was actually kind of amazing when Aria thought about it. The whole damn village reeked with that particular rotting odor unique to swamps. Despite that, they’d somehow scrounged up the audacity to provide paying customers with a mattress that smelled so distinctively foul from the air she was forced to breathe in that she hesitated to even sit on it.

Please let that boy find that hydra right away, she silently prayed, casting that th...