Climbing down the face of the crag proved to be far easier than it had looked from above. It was as if someone had sprinkled it with well-placed handholds and footholds–which was probably the case indeed, Hunter suspected. By the time he reached the ground, he had barely broken a sweat.
The view from down there was strikingly different. There were no sunny skies and rejuvenating warmth beneath the thicket of the pines and firs–just cool shadows, only now and then cut by solitary rays of sunlight. Still, the place was teeming with life. From crickets to birdsong to the occasional rustle in the undergrowth, the sounds of the forest’s tenants were everywhere around Hunter.
Finding his way among the trees proved to be tricky, but he still managed to orient himself. That got him another two ranks in Survival, taking him to a grand total of 3. Not bad for a few minutes’ work. Hunter suspected that improving his skills would get progressively harder fast, of course, but this did not detract from the satisfaction he felt every time he got a Skill Progression notification.
He’d been wandering in the woods for the better part of an hour when he stumbled on something peculiar. Just as he moved closer, he got another notification:
At first, Hunter mistook the tall mound for a misshapen tree of some sort and almost passed it by. Then the glimmer of steel caught his eye and he decided to get a closer look.
It was a… thing, for a lack of a better word. It stood in the center of a small clearing, a thick and overgrown mass of old bones and antlers almost eight feet tall. It looked as if an elk and a human had died wrestling each other and a column of briars had grown around their remains to preserve their mortal struggle for eternity. Lodged throughout the mass and still held tight in the skeletal remains of the man’s hand was a long polearm, most likely the weapon with which he’d slain the great beast as its raised hooves were cracking his own skull.
Weirder still was the polearm itself. The bones of both the man and the elk looked weathered, almost ancient. The weapon, however–a long single-edged blade on the end of a pole–looked unmarred, as if it hadn’t spent a single day out in the open.
Now, Alex had spent the vast majority of his life consuming pop culture by the truckload; books, movies, games, you name it. To any genre-savvy person, the whole scene screamed “cursed”. What’s more, any sane genre-savvy person would retrace their steps and get the hell out of dodge.
Alex, however… Alex was a special kind of foolhardy, always taking all the wrong risks for all the wrong reasons.
They had a running joke back at his raiding party, one about what his gravestone would read one day: “My dumb ass knew better, but my dumb ass did it anyway.”
Case in point, his dumb ass did know better. There was no way in hell something bad wouldn’t happen if he decided to disturb those remains and pull the weapon free. And still, to prove that silly witticism right yet again, he did just that; he grabbed it by the shaft, near the base of the blade, and pulled.
In all honesty, he didn’t expect to be able to free the weapon from the mass of bones and branches. Not so easily, at least. The moment he touched the shaft, however, it was as if the whole mound came alive and shifted its gnarly parts to let the polearm go. It wasn’t so much a matter of strength, rather than of pure will. Hunter willed the weapon free, and the mound barely resisted.
He’d never held anything more menacing than a baseball bat before, but Hunter could immediately tell this was a fine weapon, sturdy and perfectly balanced despite its huge size. Its pole was a seven-foot staff made of polished dark wood, and the single-edged steel blade on its end was another foot and a half.
In short, it was big.
He had hardly held the glaive for a moment when a chill ran up his spine. It was a good thing that it did, too; he was so absorbed by the weapon, he almost missed the towering mound of briars, vines, and bones that was about to bash his head in.
More out of pure luck than any semblance of skill, Hunter managed to dodge just out of the thing’s reach at the last possible moment, tripping and falling flat on his butt in the process.
With a cacophony of creaks and cracks, the shambler started shifting into a vaguely humanoid form. It tore its roots out of the ground and braided them into makeshift legs, which made it stand over ten feet tall. The skeletons of the man and the elk twisted and shifted, too, forming long, briar-covered arms. The two skulls, now somehow melded into one, formed the shambler’s antlered head. In its empty eye sockets Hunter could swear he could see two pinpoints of cold, primal rage.
He rose back to his feet and picked up the glaive, which he’d unceremoniously dropped to the ground. His first instinct was to get the hell away from the shambler as fast as possible. Other games had tutorials filled with rats and slimes to ease the player into the experience, but Elderpyre? No siree, no rats for you, fight this huge bramble-skeleton-nature-golem-hulk and be glad it’s not a goddamn dragon.
How was he supposed to fight this thing? He hardly even knew how to hold his weapon.
Not willing to get smashed to jelly, Hunter bolted for the treeline. Hopefully the trees and undergrowth would slow the creature down. He’d barely managed to cover thirty feet, however, when he realized that running through the woods with a nine-foot pole in his hands would be pretty much impossible. Still, he wasn’t about to give up the first piece of loot he’d gotten his hands on–and his only weapon, at that. Dodging behind a tree trunk, he hazarded a glance at the shambler.
The thing was closing in on him, a towering mass of briars, roots, and bone ready to smash him to bits.
A fairly slow towering mass of briars, roots, and bone ready to smash him to bits.
Hunter knew it was his ignorance of the risks involved talking, but just looking at it made him wonder… could he take it, if he really tried?
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
His mouth twisted in a lopsided, impish smile.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
He was about to have another of his dumbass moments.
The glaive had a fairly long reach; he could probably attack the thing from a safe distance, more or less, if he had enough room to maneuver. That meant he had to circle back to the clearing where the shambler had stood in the first place.
Careful not to get his new and oversized weapon caught in some shrub or low-hanging branch, Hunter moved from tree to tree, always trying to keep at least one thick trunk between him and his pursuer. The shambler itself followed as best as its hulking mass and low mobility allowed, which was not exactly breakneck speed.
So far, so good.
Hunter stepped out in the open and the massive thing followed. It moved with a slow and steady pace, predictably going around obstacles. For a moment, Hunter thought he had the thing all but figured out.
Then it cleared the treeline and things took a turn for the worse real fast.
With no more tree trucks between them to impede it, the shambler charged straight at Hunter. Its sudden burst of speed took him completely by surprise. Hy managed to jump to the side and let it barrel past him, but it was close.
Too close.
Still, its now unprotected back–if it could be called that–presented an opportunity Hunter wasn’t about to miss. He hefted the glaive and stabbed at the thing with all his might, putting his weight behind the blow.
Shit.
New skills or no new skills, his attack didn’t even make the thing flinch.
That was… disquieting.
He pulled his glaive free from the thing’s back–he should be more careful not to get the blade lodged or stuck in all the vines and bones–and took a few steps back.
The shambler turned around, covered the distance between them in a couple of gigantic strides, and swung a massive limb aimed straight at Hunter’s head. Testing the thing’s reach, he scampered backwards and evaded the attack completely.
Seeing another opening, Hunter took advantage of his glaive’s long reach and stabbed the shambler again, this time in its exposed flank.
Again, no luck. Maybe the thing had a high defense stat, or a damage immunity passive ability, or something of the like. He couldn’t tell–he had not the slightest idea about how combat and damage calculation worked in Elderpyre.
Then it hit him; he was being dumb.
Hunter had been trying to stab a mass of briars and old bones. How effective could he expect piercing damage to be against such a creature? Or any kind of physical damage, really?
He backstepped even further, risking another charge attack from the shambler in exchange for a bit more time to study it and try to find a weak spot. Quite predictably, the hulk bull-rushed him again, aiming to crush him with the pure force of its mass times its speed.
Hunter’s brain worked furiously. It almost felt like time had slowed down.
What could he do, besides futilely sticking the pointy end of his glaive into the damn thing?
He could trip it with the shaft–except he couldn’t, the shambler was too large and heavy for that.
He could aim for some vital part, like the eyes or the brain–except, again, he couldn’t. The shambler had none of those.
He could at least try to hamstring it–but it didn’t have any tendons or muscles either.
Or did it?
Bones didn’t move by themselves. Maybe the plant matter that held the whole thing together was what helped the shambler move, too, like a vegan-friendly equivalent of a muscular system.
Still, what could he do?
Try to spear each vine and briar and root, one by one?
No, not spear, you numbnuts, Hunter scolded himself as the solution suddenly became obvious. You don’t spear plants–you cut them. And this glaive he was holding? It had a blade as long as his goddamn forearm!
Ready to try something new, he dodged to the side again and let the shambler hurtle past him.
Another notification popped up, informing him that his Evasion skill had gained another rank, but he barely paid it any attention. He hefted his glaive, aimed at the roots that held the shambler’s knee together, and slashed at them with everything he had.
Tiffany’s tits! That’s more like it!
A low, rumbling moan echoed from somewhere within the mound of bones and briars that formed its torso as the shambler flinched and lurched to keep its balance. It turned around to face Hunter again, but its injured leg almost collapsed under its weight.
Already feeling bolder after the successful attack, Hunter didn’t waste any time. He followed through with another slash, this time aimed at the vines that lined the shambler’s elbow.
Judging from how the whole arm went limp–and the quite obvious “critical hit!” part of the combat log’s message–the attack was another success. The shambler let out another moan, took a big step back, then tried to charge Hunter again. With half its limbs more or less out of commission, though, the most it could do was a slow, awkward shuffle.
Hunter almost felt bad about it.
Almost.
Even so, downing the shambler ended up taking Hunter a couple more minutes of hitting it with one debilitating strike after the other. The thing could really take a lot of punishment. It was a good thing it was so slow, or he could have been in serious trouble.
In the end, it was a powerful slash to the tangle of vines that formed the shambler’s spine that finally put it down for good. Hunter poked it a couple more times, just to be sure, and turned his attention to the notifications that had been flooding his vision during the fight.
His Close Combat and Polearm Mastery skills had both increased to 8. Not bad at all. Come to think of it, handling the glaive had gotten progressively less awkward the more he used it, though he still had a long way to go before he could feel proficient with it.
Gaining skill ranks was all well and good, but getting distracting notifications during fights and the like could prove to be dangerous. Wasn’t there some kind of option menu, or at least a way to turn them off?
Falling back on Faux-Grimm’s advice, he simply willed the notifications to not appear before him anymore. Instead, he just wanted a small, subtle exclamation point icon somewhere near the edge of his vision. Or maybe a news ticker kind of thing. In any case, something decidedly less intrusive than billboard-sized pop-up windows cluttering up half his field of vision.
He had barely completed his thought when the same icon and ticker he’d envisioned popped up in the upper right corner of his sight. Intrigued, he willed his newly configured notification window visible.
Perfect. Hunter could really get used to this kind of intuitive controls.
Winded and sweating like a pig, Hunter sat down to take a breather and try to reorient himself. The sun was already making its way past its zenith point, and roughing it in a cold and dark forest wasn’t exactly how he envisioned his first night in Aernor. If he wanted to be anywhere near that log cabin by nightfall, he had a lot of ground to cover.