Noem tapped on his interface once and set it to voice-activated mode. He flicked his wrist and summoned a compound bow, then rolled his shoulder and summoned a plain black quiver of fiberglass arrows to his hip. He pulled one free, revealing bright orange synthetic fletching at one end which sizzled with Qi that felt like a rush of hot wind.
“Identify and lock on.” Noem said without hiding his voice, but his words were trapped within his anonymity hood. Not so much as a breath would escape its effects. He set the arrow’s notch against the bowstring and let it fall onto the rest just above his fingers, then knelt down while he activated Steady, Ambidextrous, and Focus. His hands instantly stilled, and his eyes locked onto the boundless creature’s strangely moving form.
Puffing Ceridaunt: Threat level 2.
A Ceridaunt spirit of air and plant Qi. Currently inhabiting a body made from bone-white brittlewood and verdant coilvine, with a bond anchor constructed of heartwood from the previously mentioned tree. Possibility of this specimen having three learned skills, based on other accounts and Qi levels: 35%. Two skills: 60%. One skill: 5%.
Possible skills: Create Plants(Fluff), Windrider, Propagate.
Noem drew his arrow and took a steadying breath. It did next to nothing thanks to his skill. He trailed the Ceridaunt as it meandered around the uneven terrain, barely raising its legs to get over rough patches that could’ve easily broken an ankle. Its anchor pulsed with Qi like a beating heart, and though it would be a clean killshot, Noem couldn’t aim for it. He needed the Qi intact to get any use of the anchor.
Which meant the spirit inside had to leave. Noem let fly his arrow and pushed off in the same breath, crushing leaves that shattered like spun sugar under his feet. His arrow sunk into the Ceridaunt’s right shoulder with a sound reminiscent of an axe cutting into a thick tree. The creature turned and ran in a burst of wind that scattered the fluffs that had shed off its tail.
“That’s gotta be windrider.” Noem noted and nocked another arrow as he leaned into an all-out sprint. The Ceridaunt bled a trail of Qi that floated and bobbed like a much thinner version of its tail, granting him a trail he could follow even if he lost sight of the boundless creature.
Spirits bolted as Noem ran. He briefly considered swapping out which skills he had active, but an unconscious correction over a spiky root that would’ve done far more than trip him killed that thought. Steady and Focus were a perfect pair, one honing his body while the other honed his mind, and they were the skills that Noem was by far the most proud of. He could run over uneven terrain without paying the slightest bit of attention, or focus on one thing while his body unconsciously reacted to another completely separate thing.
The unfortunate side effect was the horrible Qi drain. Even with his ninth-stage Qi, Noem could only keep both of his skills active for half an hour. If he added in the drain from Ambidextrous, which was far less than the other two, he had twenty-five minutes to capture the Ceridaunt and force it out of its anchor.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
No time to waste. Noem burst through the underbrush and snapped to the Ceridaunt’s path, running at full-tilt over roots and shattered ground with his bow in one hand and the other held out to block his face from whatever might fall from above. Whistling winds grew further and further away as the Ceridaunt picked up speed, but as a threat level two creature, Noem was confident that he wouldn’t lose it.
Confidence that began to waver as the trail started to dry up. Not for any recovery reason; the Ceridaunt was simply running fast enough that the Qi was dissipating before Noem could properly follow it. He spat a curse and pushed himself even further, but thanks to his skills, he was already very close to his mortal limits. Sprint and Dash were too mana hungry to use for what felt like an endurance hunt, so those were out of the equation.
“Show me a map of all the Qi oases near here.” He huffed in frustration. “The Ceridaunt’s not going back to that one, so it’s gotta be running somewhere…”
Noem trailed off as the underbrush dissolved into something… strange. Two massive white stone legs took up the vast majority of the clearing he’d just burst into, and aside from the roots that crawled towards and through the stone, there was nothing else. He twisted his neck around and saw glimpses of spirits in the underbrush that surrounded the third of a statue–none of which even attempted to put an ethereal foot or hoof into the clearing. Even the Ceridaunt was nowhere to be seen.
Though the thin trail it left led right under the statue’s legs. It pooled in a mass of Qi behind one of the feet, just out of Noem’s line of sight. He suppressed the desire to grin with the feeling of foreboding that came along with finding the statue. The more he looked, the less it made sense.
The feet were something like real feet, but where the toes should’ve met the foot itself, they continued. Five individual toes with far too many toe-knuckles all the way up to the ankle. Which was a perfect cylinder stuck through the statue like a woodworking join, except it looked like it was covered in skin. Thin, rocky skin.
Right above the join began a pair of calves that looked like a mass of muscular braided steel cords twisted into almost the right shape. There were no visible knees, just a slight bend where they would’ve been, and the cords grew wider as they went into the thighs. Then they just… ended. No shatter marks, no crumbling top, and no debris–ancient or otherwise–to mark any destruction.
Noem frowned at the statue that he was damn sure didn’t exist the last time he’d been through this area. The legs cut off right below where they would’ve joined the rest of a torso, but at exactly the same point for both of them. And the cuts were perfectly clean.
“This smells like a trap.” He muttered to himself as he leaned down and removed the arrow from his bow. He grabbed the tip and flicked it with a Qi-infused finger, which caused a chain reaction of Qi bursts and mechanical clicks that ended with the part of the arrow just behind the tip opening into a small metal cage.
Noem activated Heavy Blow with one finger pressed to the arrow’s cage. He breathed out slowly and forced the skill into the cage built into the arrow, which lit up with tiny inscriptions he’d carved himself to pull the Qi inside. When the entire little cage was filled with Qi the colour of burnt caramel and the consistency of molasses he stopped the flow and deactivated his skill.
The arrow held the skill within it easily. Noem continued to stalk along the edges, glancing at whatever spirits were bold enough to come slightly close, and made his way to a spot where he could make out the Ceridaunt. Stone toes slowly gave way to the shaft of an arrow that stuck straight up into the air. Before Noem saw the Ceridaunt, the arrow was a beacon of something horribly wrong.
He’d hit the Ceridaunt in the shoulder. If it was sticking straight up, that meant the animal was lying down on its left side. Not five minutes had passed since Noem had shot the arrow, so there wasn’t enough time for the boundless spirit to get tired or run out of Qi. Something was up. Not necessarily wrong, since spirits had ways of fighting back that didn’t involve running away, but none of the Ceridaunts he’d un-bonded had acted like this before.
Noem skulked back into the underbrush to give himself as much cover as possible. He wasn’t going to die because he underestimated a spirit, even if it was just a Ceridaunt. The skill-infused arrow sang with potential as Noem drew the string and took a few cautious steps to reveal the Ceridaunt’s body.
Or what was left of it.