“Get him, Fang!” I yelled, sprinting through the trees to our quarry. Fang, my new gray wolf friend, blurred around my knees. The trees opened up as we followed the stream towards the hobbled silverback. The huge boar roared, kicking and bucking, but couldn’t get any leverage to attack with its rear legs lifted off the ground by my improvised rope trap.
Fang lunged, landing on the silverback's haunches and shredding through the tough hide like it was nothing. Fang had leveled tremendously over the last two weeks, all the way to level 14. With each additional level, he had grown larger and more dangerous to the host of herbivores dotting the chunk. The spined silverback was no exception.
I jogged up and delivered a swift cut to the silverback to ensure I got kill credit, then cheered on Fang as he finished off the monster. Fang ripped out a slab of meat from the still-living creature, practically inhaling it with that over-exuberant enthusiasm of the young. Before he could fully swallow it, the silverback stiffened and turned to jelly. Fang choked, gasping as his meal turned liquid and slimy in his mouth.
He hacked up the gel, turning to me with a pitiful whimper.
“You know better than that, Fang,” I chuckled, giving the gangly young wolf a scritch behind the ears. His tail wagged, tossing his hindquarters back and forth with the force of the movement as I kneeled beside the pile of three drops and tossed him the massive slab of boar meat from the cooling gel. Fang gulped it down with only a minimal amount of chewing, and I smiled as I turned my attention back to the kill.
Hunter was the strangest skill as of yet. It was inextricably linked to the others with an odd mix of traps combined with regular combat. As far as I could tell, any attempt to trap or restrain a creature before killing it while it was incapacitated granted hunter experience. This ranged from catching a Cobalt Admiral with a net to my improvised snare trap that the spined silverback had fallen for.
The system hadn't provided a method of creating traps, but at least it had remembered to provide hunter accessories this time. The maple noose I carried increased my effective hunter level by 9 points after I’d carved it from a maple log with a knife. The increased hunter level seemed to make my traps tougher, and the higher the level got, the rarer it was for a trap to break before I could harvest it. On the obverse, prior to hitting level 30 hunter, any trap the spined silverback fell into broke apart instantly. It was only once my combined effective level surpassed thirty did any of my traps work on the silverback.
Speaking of, I pulled the rat tail rope from over and around the overhanging tree branch. At first, I’d wanted to try pit traps or fallen log traps but eventually settled on less environment-altering methods like the snare I'd fashioned. The reason was as it had always been: The ground and trees were immune to any kind of impact that I could produce. So I'd settled for fashioning a rope out of twisted rat tails. The result wasn't recognized by the system as a true item but restrained the spined silverback perfectly fine regardless.
Fang whined again and snuffled at the last of the clear gel as if looking for more food. My smile returned as I offered the ravenous teenager some smoked snuffler.
“Good work, buddy,” I patted Fang and collected the piece of silverback hide and the single ivory tusk dropped by the boar before making my way back to the mining camp. The other nice thing about hunter was that it increased drop rates. Testing the skill on rats showed that hunting a creature instead of just killing it doubled the chance of a rare drop. Frankly, the bonus wasn’t good enough for fast-spawning creatures like the rats, but it was essential for the spined silverback as its respawn timer was nearly an hour long.
At the smithy, I kicked the massive pile of crafted snuffler equipment aside and dumped the silverback hide and tusk on the anvil. My leather equipment had improved dramatically since I’d leveled my crafting through the animal hides generated from hunting. My spined cloak, hood, gloves, and boots all counted as tier-3 equipment and further boosted my defensive and offensive stats. The mane of silver spines also looked downright epic as it flared and rippled whenever the wind blew.
There was just one last item I hadn’t yet crafted, but with the silverback tusk in hand, I should have all the materials ready. I pulled out my hammer and an iron knife, then gently began combining the hide and tusk with a maple log. My crafting level thrummed in the back of my mind as the materials slowly morphed together.
Crafting:32/32
With a steady stream of high-level materials, crafting levels had whizzed by. It had been a breeze. Almost like cheating, but I supposed it had technically taken longer than the 1 to 10 grind. Between caring for Fang and tracking the elusive snufflers, fast was the last adjective I'd use to describe the 10 to 30 grind.
The materials finished melding, slowly morphing to form what I could only describe as a misformed pickaxe. The polished maple haft gleamed beneath thick cordage from the silverback hide wrapped tightly around its length. Lashed at the end of the tool was the silverback tusk. It curved downward and narrowed sharply to form a lethally vicious chisel that looked more like a torture instrument than a mundane weapon.
“Yo, what have I made,” I lifted the murder weapon curiously as Fang’s telltale patter heralded his approach. He wound his way between my legs and looked up, curiously sniffing at the tool, then attempting to bite the horn. I laughed, pulling the tool out of his reach. “I think we should call this an adze. What do you say, Fang?”
Fang whined, hopping onto the anvil and nearly slipping off as he leaned over to lick my face.
“Adze it is,” I smiled, then paused as I noticed an empty divot at the top of the tool. Everything about the weapon looked complete, except for that. Taking a moment to examine it more closely, I noticed that it was a perfect fit for a cut moonstone. In fact, it was so perfect that when I tested the fit, the system pinged with a chunk objective completion.
"Would you look at that!" I grinned at Fang. “Looks like we got ourselves a new toy to play with. What say you we figure out how this bad boy works, hmm?"
He yipped in agreement, and together we set out. Despite looking like a pickaxe, the moonlit adze was clearly a weapon. It didn’t allow me to mine ore or cut trees. Perhaps most obviously, it granted a +9 bonus to attack like iron weaponry and granted attack experience like the sword.
The special power of the moonstone was an enigma, though. Where the agate had induced a pulse of frost behind the struck target, the moonstone had a far less obvious effect. When swinging the adze, the pale white glow around the weapon would randomly ramp steadily before abruptly vanishing several seconds later. Beyond this, the weapon didn’t appear to do more damage or provide any additional stats.
I went to my trusty spawn and tested out the effects on the rats. I killed a rat with a single decisive strike, then counted seconds.
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“One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi, four mississippi—”
Abruptly, the moonstone on the haft started glowing, steadily ramping brighter and brighter until four additional seconds later, it flashed for a quarter second and then vanished.
“Eight seconds total. Four after an initial hit, then four to ramp, then a quarter-second flash, and it goes dim.” I told Fang. He yipped thoughtfully, and I turned to see what each stage of the ramp did. The rats were far too fragile to get a complete picture, so I tracked down the spined silverback to test it. Unfortunately, it was also way too fragile, especially since Fang took great pleasure in ‘helping’ me kill it. I scolded the little guy, slipping a leash around his scruff that I tied to a tree.
Luring one of the hemogris biters out of their muddy chunk and into the forest was way harder than it looked. Their frustrating tendency to fight in a pack forced me to wipe out all but one of their number since they always managed to howl at some point to call their friends, no matter what I tried. I eventually managed to isolate one of their numbers and started experimenting.
“Two quick hits...” I grunted as I hit the biter upside the jaw in rapid succession, “does nothing.”
I waited for the ramp and flash to fade, then swallowed some rat meat to outpace the biter’s damage. Triggering the ramp again with a solid thwack, I waited for the gemstone to glow before hitting again. This once again did nothing visible. It was only when I struck the biter precisely when the gemstone flashed did I see a result.
In an explosion of gore and gray matter, the biter’s head vaporized to my halfhearted strike. Headless, its body took a hesitant step back as if unsure how it should behave, then toppled over bonelessly. I blinked in surprise, wiping some gore off my face as the body turned to clear gel a second later.
“Holy,” I muttered, glancing down at the weapon in surprise. Before I could properly order my thoughts, a big fluffy ball of worried wolf slammed into the back of my knees, and I collapsed in a heap. Fang jumped onto me, yipping and licking at me continuously as the frayed edges of my makeshift leash dangled from around his scruff.
“I’m good. I’m good! Don’t worry, little guy,” I chuckled, petting Fang in order to calm him. Mollified, he turned his attention to the dead hemogris, snuffling through its remains. “How’d you even get out of that leash, smart boy.”
Fang ignored me, seemingly offended that the hemogris hadn't dropped anything edible. He pelted off into the woods, and I returned to studying my new weapon. It massively increased the damage of an attack if timed correctly. The window was tight. Short enough that I would need to initiate a swing before the weapon fully charged. It would take practice to hit it consistently, especially in the midst of combat.
Practice made perfect, and I was perfectly happy to get my practice in on the hemogris biters on the ground floor of the fort. With maple campfires augmenting the smoked snuffler, I barely had to dodge much to stay ahead of their damage. I didn’t instantly go for kills, rather focusing on trying to trigger the moonstone as often as possible. I learned that it wasn’t necessary to strike a target to initiate the charge. Rather, a strong swing on open air was enough.
I danced around the overly aggressive biters, trusting in my food and tier-three armor to protect me as I kept count under my breath. Each strike, whether failed or not, had me jumping back and slashing down roughly to trigger the next charge. Having to wait 8 seconds between real attacks slowed down my damage, but every time a charged attack landed, a biter collapsed lifelessly to the floor.
Fang returned sometime later but was still too low-level to reasonably help. He still tried, working his hardest to distract a biter here and there. After each of my kills, he leaped onto the melting body and snarled at it before sprinting away to avoid retaliation.
I smiled at his antics and went under the hemogris fort. The six biters were good practice, but I needed way more foes to attain mastery. The two adult wolves were back, but Fang’s cage was notably empty. Fang snarled at the caged wolves, looking at me plaintively when I walked right by.
“Not these guys,” I shook my head, saddened that opening the cages was a non-starter due to the wolves' automatic aggression on this patch. “About time you reunited with your parents, now that I think of it. Stay here and socialize with them, will you? I'm afraid they hate my guts, but you should be fine. Have fun!”
Fang plopped down onto his haunches and licked his lips as I climbed the ladder. My head popped up through the trap door and got the fright of my life as I came face to face with the razor-thin edge of the floor. Gingerly, I stepped onto it and found myself in a small grungy room with a curtain for a doorway. It led out to the external walkway, but before doing anything rash, I pulled out a few small maple logs and lit a campfire.
Then I stepped out and enacted the slaughter. The hemogris up here were tougher and higher level than the ones on the ground floor, with a combat level of 38. They also carried spears, swords, and other weaponry, making fighting them significantly more difficult. What made it even harder, however, was that they routinely ducked in and out of battle to flank, navigating the twisted maze of platforms with frightening agility.
Unfortunately, their spears melted with them upon death, so I couldn’t steal their weaponry for myself. Like the biters, these skirmishing variants dropped a host of bronze equipment that wasn’t at all useful to me with my iron armor and tier 3 adze. I collected all the rat tails and fur they dropped where I could. It wasn’t the best way to train crafting anymore, but it felt wrong to leave the materials lying on the ground.
Luckily, the narrow hallways were too tight for the more numerous skirmishers to properly surround me. With some clever positioning, I managed to fight only one or two at a time, though each fight took far longer than any of the battles with the biters. Despite only being 7 combat levels higher, the skirmishers dealt as much damage as the biters but were able to take far more abuse than their weaker cousins.
My gear still put me at higher effective stats, and I overcame the increased defenses with my moonlit adze and several handfuls of iron knives that I threw liberally. It was even harder to land the timing of the moonlit adze against these tougher foes as they routinely jumped back at the worst time, but as I fought more, I improved markedly.
Again and again, the adze flashed crystalline white, and a hemogris skirmisher crumpled under the massive blow. Knocking them to the floor allowed me to land successive hits before they regained their feet. Doing so often opened me up to a blow from a different skirmisher, and even my maple campfire and tier-two snuffler meat were barely enough to keep me alive.
Eventually, though, the skirmisher's numbers waned, and I paused before a ladder leading up to the third floor. After 14 brutally desperate kills and leaving a trail of fading campfires across the floor, I'd succeeded.
I’m going to need more meat, I thought idly as I spat out the foul taste in my mouth. Consuming so much smoked snuffler in such a short time frame had left me feeling vaguely nauseous. I wasn't finished yet, with one final item on the chunk objective list. The components of which were likely waiting for me on the final floor of this fort. If the pattern held, I should expect to find level 45 hemogris up there or maybe even higher. Especially considering I was getting serious boss fight vibes from the whole chunk.
The very thought excited me, and I couldn't wait to pit my skills and stats against the empowered creature.
Combat level:35 Health:43/43 Attack:50/50 Defense:49/49 Recovery:23/23 Woodcutting:52/52 Firemaking:48/48 Crafting:32/32 Mining:42/42 Smithing:42/42 Cooking:49/49 Hunter:31/31
I’d only increased one of my combat stats, but that was fine as I'd balanced my other stats pretty well. I’d really not done enough combat in the interim to get the several thousand experience points required for the next level, but now that I had a plentiful source of enemies, it shouldn't be too hard to level up. I was also technically under-leveled, which was vaguely worrying, but taking into account my gear, I should still have a small level advantage against even what was lying in wait on the next floor.
With one final look at my stats, I ascended the ladder.