Thirteen Days until the Duel with Edbert

Midmorning

On my first day in Hekatondrona, I strode out into the countryside for privacy and a moment of calm. I tried to find those in the vast coastal grassland known as the Tidewarren. Instead of the privacy and calm I sought, I instead went through a crash course in the dangers of Hekatondrona. It was honestly a premium ticket to understanding that danger. Of course, I did!

After all, I thought myself safe up in a tree while the Shepherds of Strongbridge did their customary battle with the most common predators on this plain. Those menaces of the prairie were natural enemies of the shepherds and their herds, and they were called Jackanacks. Jackanacks are wild, horned, and huge hare-like monsters. Jackanacks normally move in number and if I were naming the plural of those monsters, it wouldn’t be herd or pack.

The best plural for them was a mosh. Because like that rock concert staple, they were wild, dangerous, and likely to cause you some bruises from sheer proximity. I didn’t know it on my first day, either.

I thought myself safe just because I had perched up in a tree and I had nothing to do with the shepherds. After all, trees had been humanity’s defense since before humanity was humanity, had they not? Maybe that was true on Earth, but I quickly learned that this was not Earth.

The basic lesson was that this was not my home world and did not have the same rules or assumptions as it did. In an express delivered movement, and with it, my earthling assumptions got violently snatched and rocketed away.

I don’t mean it in some poetic exaggeration. The action that taught me that was one movement that was so quick that I only caught the end. Before I could even realize it, the earth-and-tree-shaking movement knocked me from my perch, and the movement was instantly followed up. As I fell, the Alpha Jackanack lunged at me at the end of its movement, and without coming to a stop, it knocked me out in one hit. All it had taken was me falling from my perch and the monster landing one of its clownishly large hind paws upon my torso.

So now that I stood in a field waiting for yet another one of the Alpha Jackanacks to charge at me, I felt my breath hitch in my throat. Good. That meant that I wasn’t utterly psychotic. Was this what squares of pikemen felt when they stood their ground for the first time against a cavalry charge?

“Bzz, bbzzz, bzzzzao! Bzz, bzz, Bzzzaoo!” buzz-chirped Bedevere the Beelebian, reasserting me into the moment. The fuzzy bee-like monster with expressive eyes kept up its little chant and with that insectoid hymn, I took more controlled breaths.

This might be a world with entirely different expectations. It might be one with a bunch of dangers that I didn’t have the inbuilt knowledge to combat. However, I couldn’t let that stop me. I could learn, and as the earth began to more violently shake, I remembered the story I had told Osbert and Gwendolyn about the little knight that broke a charge with nothing but his father’s hunting spear. As I remembered that story I had told to my eldest children while tucking them into bed, I remembered its origin, too.

Being a good father, protecting, and loving my children, was important to me. The importance was not just because they were my children and the sources of so much joy and love in my life. No, it was important to me because I had vowed long ago to be better. Before I was a parent, I reminded myself with each deep breath.

As I stood in the wind-swept coastal prairie, I felt images of the real origin of that story. As I saw the massive horns, the lustrous and hungry eyes, and the powerful muscles of the Jackanacks and their Alpha, I saw something else.

My father and his friends were on their motorcycles, driving around and causing mayhem down the empty stretch of road that led to our trailer park. They were drinking and horsing around, and given that I had stared at my father with the same expression any child who wanted their dad home would, his buddies drove dangerously close to me.

I had controlled my breath then. I had clenched my fist and wished I had a bat to knock those immature and malicious children in the guise of men right off their bikes.

So as the great menaces thundered forward, I stood my ground. With calm and control, I drew the saber carved from an oddly large smilodon tooth known as the Ancestor’s Grasp, and I held it with both of my hands. As I held it tighter, I could feel the rawhide grip and felt comfort from its rough texture against my hand. It kept me focused on the moment, and as I watched the beasts, I asked the simplest of questions to myself. Surely this thing had clearly struck down scores of greater foes, hadn’t it?

I would try to live up to the provenance and prestige I imagined of it. The first step of living up to the weapon would require breaking loose with it and truly testing the limits of the weapon and I. So I controlled my breath more precisely. I dug for the memory of that first feeling of warmth that had entered me on learning the technique and that I had felt again on every use of my instance of the Vulcan’s Crescent technique, and I pushed that warmth through my fingertips into the weapon. Through its fingers and into its hilt that heated feeling went, and when it passed from hilt to haft, the treasure became awash in the orange light of a fire’s ember. Stark white and vivid orange danced across the blade and the Jackanacks continued their charge.

As the mosh got closer, I keyed my passive analysis skill on the Alpha Jackanack and let it do its work. With my shepherd class still active, I would soon learn an expert amount about the monster, which had been my first opponent on Hekatondrona.

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[[Jackanacks are a hare-like monster that has some purported but not proven distant relation to the Sabigiri family of monsters. Powerfully muscled runners and swimmers, these creatures are common in much of Hekatondrona and have a distinct secondary type based on the region from which that subspecies originate from. Jackanack horns constantly grow and naturally shatter. These horns are extremely prized as materials for the construction of porcelain dishware. Jackanacks are omnivorous, but prefer eating foods that move because they find it hard to remain in one place. This jackanack is male. All jackanacks are nature and wind-primarily aligned monsters. This jackanack has a secondary water alignment. Its tertiary alignment is locked. It is level 15. This Jackanack is an alpha-class monster.]]

My breathing didn’t go back to being out of control - instead, after reading that, I gulped. Level 15? That meant this Jackanack was even stronger than the Cobliath I had fought, and that was with backup.

But the monster bible entry was not all that the analysis had given me. I quickly took in the rest, because there was no complex entry. More detail on opposing monsters would come when I finished leveling up the shepherd class, but I could see a vividly green bar surrounded by a white box floating over the Jackanack Alpha’s head, with the words ‘Jackanack Alpha’ and ‘Level 15’ floating over the box. Under the box was the Hekatondronan runic digit three, which was a specialized number but also a pictogram for wind moving. Directly to its left was a word in English, as if the system was tailoring it just for me. It was the word weakness.

This jackanack was a wind-aligned monster but also weak to wind. It made sense, with the monster bible entry I had read; but as I quickly analyzed the other members of its mosh, I understood that its weakness that was not universal. Some were weak to earth, to fire, to artifice, to fae, to nature, or to water. One was even weak to primal.

This would be a rough fight! Or would have, if the mosh had not quickly found itself swallowed up in the sunburst-shaped reliquary traps we had hidden out on the field in front of me. As the hare-like monsters put weight upon the center mass of the devices, a pressure plate moved and they quickly snapped shut. It was like a bear trap with the folds of origami and made of lacquered wood and polished metal.

In bursts of green-colored light that quickly turned golden, the mosh disappeared one by one. Apparently an alpha for more reasons than just its size, the Jackanack leader dodged the folds and summoned tiny whirlwinds upon each of its limbs and avoided the traps by not touching the ground.

System prompts demanded my attention, but I moved them to the periphery of my sight and kept my eyes firmly on the alpha jackanack. I stopped standing still and instead rushed forward at the moshlord with a charge of my own, commanding Bedevere all the while.

“On my mark, hit it with all the breezecalls you can.” It was a sloppy command, but protagonists of monster collector games and shows made it look too easy. I was still learning.

As I swung the heated bone blade of the Ancestor’s Grasp at the Jackanack Alpha, Bedevere proved he was learning, but doing so at a pace that far outclassed my own. In time with my body swooping low and I swinging up at the Jackanack Alpha, Bedevere fluttered skyward. As it came within a few inches of the huge hare monster, it quickly let loose with its own miniature bee-sized hurricane. When Bedevere’s technique hit the Jackanack Alpha, the blast of air was plenty. It had enough force to the change of momentum of the elite hare-monster. It had enough kick to send the Jackanack hurtling both backward and toward the ground.

I rushed after the elite monster, and Bedevere landed upon my head for a split second before fluttering off and doing the same thing. It happened again and again in less than a minute and soon the Jackanack was in position. As my bee monster came in for a landing that would make a fighter pilot jealous, the Jackanack instead hit the picnic table-sized sunburst-shaped reliquary trap with the force of a plummeting meteor.

Its own momentum forced the trap into greater action, and immediately it was engulfed in the workings of the tetrahedron reliquary built for its size. As quickly as the reliquary snapped shut, it shook, rattled, and rolled. Like a true die it spun around in circles and jerks. I could understand just from the movements that the Jackanack was trying to fight its way out.

This was a moment to hold my breath, and I did. Just as I unconsciously had held down the B button at moments like these in video game escapism, I held it. For several long seconds, until suddenly, the reliquary quit moving. With a finality that was jarring to my attempts at ignoring expectations, it was over, and when it finished, the giant pyramid of a reliquary shrunk down to the same size I would have expected from any other.

As the adrenaline of this moment washed through me I took in the prompts. Again and again I was given the prompt:

“Congratulations! You have captured a Jackanack!” along with its level and some basic information from it. All the way to the Alpha Jackanack, and more than those simple things, I saw a reward of experience for capturing over ten monsters in one battle, for capturing over twelve monsters total, and for capturing an alpha monster.

I collapsed to my knees, breathing in. This proved my plan for the Dragon’s Tooth Bog dungeon would work; and that I could shore up my monster’s numbers for the battle with Edbert and gain strength while doing it. As I took in deep breaths I heard the voices of Calvin and Master Carpenter Vincent.

“Did it work?” questioned the more experienced craftsman.

“You saw the system prompt we got, and I think we’d hear him crying for help if it hadn’t worked, wouldn’t we?” Calvin countered, with both excitement and sarcasm in equal measure. It was said with the tone of, “I dunno, is water wet?” back on Earth.

“It worked, it worked!” I croaked forth.

“Well, isn’t that great news! You may have just revolutionized the Shepherds’ workday, if nothing else, Wade.” If Calvin was sour, then he didn’t learn it from his senior in the carpentry field. His tone was such, and soon the carpenters had chopped down their palisade and dropped it into the cart. I don’t know how they moved so quickly at it, but I was busy gathering up reliquaries. Thirteen captured Jackanacks, including the Alphas. Despite the fact they had been mass-produced by the carpenters, I had an innate understanding of which Jackanack was in which as well, and dismissed the majority of the reliquaries into the Panther King’s Satchel and thus the Panther King’s Vault.

I had fourteen days left to prepare, and if those days were as fruitful as the last few had been I was sure I would be ready.