“I hate them, they are so gross,” Max yelled after stabbing the third of the Bsr’t Blights. Jamie just laughed further to the side. She’d been doing that ever since he’d stabbed the first of the seemingly helpless creatures.
Max ran as fast as he could, dashing away from the slowly dying Bsr’t Blight.
“Ahh, don’t run to me!” Jamie yelled, still giggling.
A sudden quelch later, the creature just popped. Creating a gory perimeter around its corpse.
They’d quickly learned how the creatures acted. Each had eyes up ahead, in their direction of movement, and an apparatus that was able to spit a weak acid. Upon death they sort of sacrificed themselves, spreading their smelly and sticky internals over a small radius. More importantly, though, the internals reacted violently with the spit of other Bsr’t Blights, creating an even more acidic compound upon combining.
But when they were attacked from behind, they had little means of defense as long as one managed to retreat quickly enough. Sprint came in very handy in this scenario.
There were a total of sixteen Bsr’t Blights and Max regretted choosing them as their opponent ever since the first encounter.
Half an hour later, and seven more deaths Max looked up in confusion.
> Fearful Silver Ring (Uncommon) – Level 0 has increased in level. Fearful Silver Ring has reached its maximum level.
>
> -> Fearful Silver Ring (Uncommon) – Level 1 – Accentuate the shape your fingers.
> Ability: Fearful Roar
> Attribute: Soul + 2
> Cooldown: 11 hours
> Equipment Mastery Bonus: Slightly improves Abilities that originate in the vicinity of the ring. Improves casting Fear-Based Abilities that originate from the vicinity of the ring.
“Uhm, my ring leveled up,” Max looked questioningly at Jamie.
“My ring, you mean,” mirth still present on her face.
“Sure, whatever you say, it’s not like it could do anything if you were wearing it,” he stuck his tongue at her.
“For what, four more hours? Then I could use it again without it breaking or whatever. What does it do?”
“I think it increases my soul further – though we still have no idea of what that does – and the Fearful Roar cooldown decreased.”
“That sounds pretty good, do you think all equipment can level up.”
“I hope so, but I guess we will see. But the better question is, who is going to retrieve the Bsr’t shard,” he placed his finger on his nose. “Nose goes, ha! Suck it looser.”
“Fine, whatever. As long as you take care of the rest meanwhile.”
Jamie approached the heap where the highest-level monster had fallen, using one of the larger pieces of wood they had picked up at the swiftclaw burrow to pave the way of Bsr’t gore.
The fight with the aberrant – confirmed by their quest ticker growing by one – had not been more complex than the remainder of the fights, the outcome had been a lot more drastic though. The puddle of gore left behind had three times the radius and had agitated the remaining Bsr’ts to no end. They had still been patrolling that region ten minutes later.
Now though they had begun dispersing again and Max began his one-sided stabbing again.
Jamie was balancing the monster core on the piece of wood she was carrying when they reconvened after he was done.
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“Took you long enough. What are you planning on doing with this shard? Overalls or pants?”
“I’m not quite sure yet; don’t even know if it will work. I feel like having some mild acidic effect – there seems to be a relation between monster and effect…”
“Yes, I know, get to the point,” Jamie interrupted.
“Oh, because you are so good at getting to the point.
“Better than you I am.”
“Doubtful. Anyway, if I could get it on the pitchfork, it might increase my potential against stronger opponents. I’ll see if that’s an option before I consider further.”
“Eww, it’s just gonna be even more gross than before. I’ll enforce a 10-pace distance limit if you do,” Jamie said barely keeping her snickers under control, mirth written all over her face.
He brought shard and Dung Sweeper together and the expected prompt appeared.
> Equipment Mastery: Would you like to infuse Bsr’t Blight – Aberrant Core into Dung Sweeper (Salient) – Level 0? One out of Two Core slots occupied.
>
> Yes/No
Just to confirm he brought the core to the ring and the swift striders.
> Equipment Mastery: Would you like to infuse Bsr’t Blight – Aberrant Core into Swift Striders (Uncommon) – Level 0? One out of One slot occupied.
>
> Yes/No
And the same message repeated for the ring as well.
“So, it says Dung Sweeper has another slot, but Swift Striders and the Fearful Ring don’t. I don’t know why that is. I suspect rarity is somehow responsible for that, which means the core I used with equipment mastery might matter.” He looked questioning at Jamie. “Any thoughts?”
“It’s your trait, I don’t even understand my own properly. But you are probably right. I’d consider waiting for a better core to try it. Or until you have a replacement Pitchfork or something.”
“Alright, I’ll hold off. But should I use it or would that be too risky? I don’t wanna run around wearing a poison-dripping shirt. I’m not keen, but open to ideas.”
“I’d hold off. The worst case scenario would be, that your shirt explodes the second it gets stabbed.”
Max looked mollified at her.
“Yeah, good point.”
“Sooo, next camp?” Jamie made puppy eyes at him and pointed her fingers at each other. “I’m sure it won’t be as humiliating as…”
“Woman, I swear if you keep this up, I’ll abandon you,” Max threatened, trying to keep a straight expression.
“As if you wouldn’t make fun of me if the roles were reversed.”
“As if you wouldn’t make fun of me if the roles were reversed,” Max parroted. “Whatever. Not like it matters.”
“I’d give you a hug to show you that I’m being honest when I say I appreciate you. But not as long as you swing that smelly thing around you.”
“Fine, I’ll never let go of Dung Sweeper ever again. Dung Sweeper is my best friend, I’ll have you know,” Max paused for a moment, seemingly deep in thought. “A fork that pitches before bitches.”
Jamie chortled. “Whatever stallion. Why don’t you go and poke some other ugly worms with your stick.”
###
The next valley over, further along the path to the tower held three elephant-sized creatures that Jamie and Max unilaterally decided to avoid. Given that one of the creatures was level eight and had the qualifier boss, they were extra sure of that.
“You know, I do wonder what sort of spell core it could have had,” Max mused.
“Yeah sure, that would be my number two concern, right after scratching a pureed Max off the floor.”
“I’m just saying… If they have something good defensive, they might be worth a try if we have better equipment.”
“How would you defeat them if they have a good defense? Tell you what, we can think about that again once you have all of our stuff infused with monster cores.”
“Sounds good,” Max responded before hiking one valley over.
But before he reached there, he spotted a familiar creature on the closest hill.
> Timber Wolf – Monster – Floor One – Level Three – Mini-Boss
And Max had sort of always dreamed about what fighting a wolf would be like. Not to say that he’d ever actually wanted to fight one before all this happened. But now, given that it was a monster and not an animal, it sort of felt alright.
But there was a glaring issue in this entire setting. Wolves were not lone hunters. Without exception they were pack animals, only the weakest of them being sometimes excluded from the pack. The odds were non-zero, that there were another few wolves somewhere around here.
Jamie reached him and saw the glint in his eyes. “Let’s not do something hasty. Wolves are not like they are portrayed in stories. They are pack…”
“…animals. Always hunting in groups. I know. But it seems to be alone. And I think we have a good chance.”
“Let’s scout a bit more, and if we are sure the wolf is alone, we can have a go at it.”
“I would have done that anyway. You know, it’s kind of wild how confident we are in our abilities now. Where do you think that’s coming from? I would have never dared just running up to a random wolf and attacking it just a day ago.”
“Heck if I know. I’m just glad I’m good at evaluating my own abilities for once.”