After about an hour of going about the fields and not finding anything, Moira came up with the good idea of turning into her Valkyrie form and doing some scouting from the sky. After only a few minutes she came back down.
“Well it seems that we just make way too much noise from up there I could see bunnies disappearing as soon as you guys get into earshot. So if I can make a suggestion?”
“Sure, you're my sergeant you never need to ask that,” I replied.
“Grim here seems to be the one making the most noise. Why don't he and the skeletons wait just up ahead, I can see a big tree stump there that he could use as a skinning station. I'll fly up above and direct you to where I can see groups of bunnies. You kill them and keep bringing them back to Grim so he can butcher them. He gets his class exp from butchering and you get exp from killing.”
Deciding that it was worth a shot we did just that. We set Grim up in a small clearing with the tree stump that Moira saw. And it seemed to work like a charm, within no time I had shot a few rabbits. I decided to use the skeletons to ferry the corpses back to Grim, that way I could just keep hunting. By lunchtime, we had 23 kills and Grim had most of them butchered.
We decided to take a break and use some of the meat to have some stew. Moira smelling how good it was decided to join us. We were just about to finish up when everything around us went just a little bit too quiet.
Looking past Moira I saw that looked like the glint of a big eye in tall grass about 20ft behind her. “Don't look but I think we have company,” I told the group. Just as I finished talking a gigantic wolf appeared out of the grass. About 5 ft from paw to the top of its head and nearly 8 ft long if you included the tail. It looked fairly confident of itself and slowly moved towards the group.
“Remember wolves hunt in packs, I think we are surrounded.” And with that, I quickly picked up my bow and fired off a shot at the wolf in front of us. The wolf easily dodged the shot and let out a howl that was repeated all around us. And with that nine slightly smaller wolves appeared and all charged at us.
“I'll take the big one,” Grim shouted and pulled both cleavers off his back and counter-charged. Moira changed back into her Valkyrie form and directed 3 of the skeletons to the left side while she and the other 2 formed up on the right. Trusting Moira to handle her side I drew my sword and joined the three skeletons on the left. I don't think these were the smartest of wolves as the five on my side charged straight at the skeletons holding their spears. Setting them up to take the charge 2 of the wolves were skewered and out of the fight but it also meant that 2 of the skeletons now had no weapons as the spears were stuck. As they seemed to ignore me at first I was able to get a few good hits in on a third.
The last two unhurt wolves were able to engage one of the weaponless skeletons and took him apart. The one that I had engaged suddenly turned around and sunk its teeth into my sword arm, making me drop my weapon. With it now being distracted the skeleton that still had its weapon left thrust its spear through the wolf's neck getting a crit and killing it instantly and as its spear wasn't stuck it faced off against the two wolves that destroyed its colleague. As my sword arm was now useless I had the skeleton who was weaponless pick up my sword. And just like that one of the wolves howled and they sprinted off back into the grass.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
I turned around to survey the battlefield. Moira’s group had been able to kill two of the ones on her side for the loss of both skeletons. Then I saw why the other wolves took off and ran. Grim was standing there holding up the severed head of their alpha. It looked like he had taken a few hits but it seemed that most of the blood covering him was from the wolf.
Grim’s face went from triumph to concern as soon as he saw me clutching my bloody arm. “You okay Drakon, that bite looks nasty.”
“Yeah shouldn't be too bad. Was just 20 HP of damage or so, but he got a critical in on my arm. I'll be as good as new in about 20 minutes or so.” Losing 3 of the 5 skeletons and with potentially more wolves around, we decided to finish butchering the creatures and then head back. This time Moira took over-watch flying above to keep a lookout for more wolves.
“Drakon, do you mind if we just sell the meat and keep the rest like the hides and claws. I want to try and get the leather-working skill to go with the skinning.” Grim asked.
“I think we’ll make some good money on the bounties for both the bunnies and the wolves so that fine.” And with that, we started to pack up. We found out the downside of having the skeletons carry our gear as the ones that died had their packs still on them and would respawn back at the barracks with them. So we only had the two backpacks left. Grim decided to pack the backpacks with the wolf pelts leaving the meat behind. And using a bit of rope was able to have the two skeletons carry the spears horizontally on their shoulders and hung all the bunnies off of them. On Grim insistence, we also had enough space on the spears to hang all 6 wolf heads from them. By the time that was done my arm was fully healed up.
We had no issues getting back to town and marched straight up to Grim’s room to drop off everything. It seemed that Grims’s suite had grown into another room as well. A kitchen that could also serve as a butcher's and skinners' room appeared. “I'll get to work finishing with butchering these bunnies, after that, I'll get the hides down to the tanners as I can't do that myself yet.” And Grim started to get to work.
“Ok, could you also go downstairs to sell the meat? I’m going to hand in the bounties and then do a bit of shopping. Might be a good idea to have the skeletons have a backup weapon and maybe get them some shields as well if we have the cash for it. And maybe it would be a good idea to get a bag of holding, losing most of our carry capacity when the skeletons died wasn't a good thing.” Then looking to Moira. “Can you go and check if the skeletons have respawned and if so maybe do some training with them. I'll come by with hopefully enough short swords and some shields.”
Moira turned around and headed to the barracks taking the two skeletons with her. And I made my way down and seeing Janet at the reception desk I decided to have a chat.
“Hi Janet, don't suppose you know a good place in town where we can get some basic short swords and maybe some shields?”
Janet thought it over a bit “Probably the Valiant Arms down the road. It's manned by a gnomish blacksmith named Merryn Rakin. Just tell him I sent you. Which reminds me, his daughter Aura started adventuring a few months ago and hasn't been able to find an adventuring party yet. As Merryn is an old friend I don't suppose you could try her out?”
“Sure, what class is she?” Not being too surprised as around here there were only a few people each year that became adventurers and with only Storm’s Cove being a good-sized town on the continent so far not that many parties come through looking for new members.
“I’m not going to spoil it for you. So get going.” And with that Janet shooed me away.