I approached the large cavern unsure of what the best way to hunt the craw was. When I arrived, I noticed that they tended to stay in small groups of two to three, with the occasional lone straggler. I pondered for a moment, I wasn’t sure if attacking one of the lone ones would provoke a response from the rest of them, but I wasn’t going to risk it if I couldn’t help it.

    Approaching one of the lone craw, I tried to get its attention, waving my arms after looking around to make sure none of the other craw four eyes on stalks were looking in my direction. The lone craw soon noticed me, and I instantly started to back off, trying to drag it towards the tunnel where I would be out of range of it.

    Unfortunately, my attempt failed pretty horribly, as soon as I had arrived at the tunnel, it stopped following me, turning around to head back into the cavern. Frustrated, I did what anyone would do, and cast a force bolt right at its back.

    The force bolt impacted with a light crunch, and I could see that its furry back had become slightly misshapen. I smiled as it turned back around, and started running down the tunnel, hoping it wouldn’t be like the brags and call for help. Luckily, it seemed it wasn’t interested in getting help, and it ran after me as well, its four legs moving it about the same pace as my sprinting.

    I sighed, I had hoped with their size they would be about the same speed as the moki, but it seems I was wrong. After going down the tunnel enough that I thought the sounds of battle wouldn’t attract the rest of the craw, I turned around and launched a frostbite at the craw, hoping to slow it down enough that I could get in some damage.

    The frostbite hit it with a crackling sound, freezing its legs on the right side, and it slid to a stop. I smiled, and launched an ice spear at the legs on the other side of its body. The ice spear landed, but rather than severing the legs like I had hoped, it only left deep a wound along them. Hopefully it would slow it down enough that I could simply kite it, but I wasn’t going to place my bets on that.

    It soon broke free of the ice containing it, with me only managing to get one more force bolt off at it, which seemed to have crippled one of the legs I’d wounded earlier. The wound didn’t seem to slow it down at all however, it almost seemed as if it had gotten faster.

    Once it reached me, I readied my spear, and ducked under the swing of its scythe like claws, stabbing upwards into its shell. The spear penetrated surprisingly easily, digging in about half the length of the blade before I retraced it, and hastily jumped back as its other claw came swiping at me from the other side.

    I stabbed out again, it seemed to take a second between each attack, and I was going to abuse that, launching my spear into the join on its arm like appendage. I quickly pulled it out, and this time jumped over the claw that it had sent flying towards me at shin height. I was about to stab out again, when the other claw came rushing in from the other side while I was still in the air. I instantly brought up my bracer in an attempt to guard against it, but it barely slowed down the attack, and the claw slid through my arm with painful ease, stopping only when it hit the two bones in my arm. Looking at the health bar in the corner of my vision, that single blow had cost me around a third of my health.

    Shouting out in pain, I decided I seriously needed to get a new set of armor, likely from the shells of the molts I’d hunted earlier. I dropped my spear, my arm seemingly unable to hold on to it, and I stepped back while preparing another force bolt with my unwounded arm.

    Releasing it at the same arm that I’d stabbed, it impacted with a solid sounding crunch, and the arm was now slightly twisted, it likely wouldn’t be able to get much more use out of it. Smiling with a rush that felt like adrenaline, possibly my real body producing the drug while I was in game, I ducked under the swing it sent out with its still useable arm, and prepared another frostbite, I was going to freeze it in place and step back for some more ice spears.

    I released the spell pattern, and did exactly that, sending the ice spears to the center of its mass, hoping that it would die from that as I only had enough mana left to cast another force bolt. Luckily, it collapsed, and I slowly walked up, and put my hand on its slightly furred shell, seeing what loot I would get.

    Surprisingly, the supposedly tasty meat of it was one of the loot items, along with its claws, which I knew to be exceedingly sharp from what it had done to my arm. Deciding that I would just wait to heal up rather than drink one of my limited health potions, I started my harvesting after dismissing the loot window. Looking over the book, it seems the only edible parts were in the legs and arms, as the body had a minor paralytic within it, so it wasn’t safe to eat.

    I slowly harvested the meat and chopped off the claws, going surprisingly slowly due to having only one arm. I put all the loot in my backpack, and then started to go around collecting some of the driftwood I had seen, deciding to make a fire to try out this supposedly delicious craw meat.

    I slowly shaved off thin strips of wood for tinder, and then took some of the smallest pieces of driftwood, and used my flint and steel to start a small fire, and soon it was nicely burning. This time, I wasn’t able to make a rack, but I took out my herbs, and left them to dry out by the side of the fire, and made a skewer out of one of the vaguely stick shaped pieces of driftwood.

    After the craw meat seemed to be well cooked, becoming more firm than it was at first, I took it off of the fire to have a bite. While I didn’t find it to be quite as delicious as the book had described, likely attributed to my lack of cooking skill rather than any fault of the meat itself, it was still quite tasty.

    It tasted like a slightly buttery crab, with a hint of fishiness in it, all of it meshing together and making me wish I had some lemon to put on top of it. After finish my meal, I packed up my stuff and went to go lure some more of the craw to hunt.

    The next craw went much the same way, with me this time getting a nasty gash in my chest rather than on my arm, and I collected the loot and waited for my mana to regenerate before going off to drag yet another of the craw to its doom.

    The hunting went well, and by the time I’d hunted all of the lone craw, I was much more comfortable fighting them, having not gotten any wounds from the last few of them. Now though, I had a conundrum. I’d finished off the lone craw, but there were still plenty of them left, only in groups of two to three, and I wasn’t going to be comfortable taking them down on my lonesome.

    A single craw would burn through my mana on its own, and I wasn’t confident I would be able to dodge their claws well enough that I could take on two at once. After deliberating for a while on whether I should try to climb back up and get Loss and his gang to come help me out, I decided I was going to tough it out and try and fight my way through regardless.

    I took a deep breath as I slowly approached a group of two of them, and got their attention, dragging them back towards the tunnel, casting a force bolt when they seemed like they were going to head back into the cavern.

    I held my ground as they approached, launching two force bolts at the one on the right’s arm, hoping to get it out of commission so I would have a bit of an easier time of it. They both impacted properly, but the arm didn’t end up the twisted mess I was hoping for, only sporting a web of cracks that were barely visible under the short fur it had.

    They soon reached me, and both slashed out with their claws at the same time, making it easy for me to step back and stab out at the already wounded arm. The wound did little to deter it however, as they slashed out again, one low and one high.

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    I blanked for a moment before doing the only thing I thought would let me avoid the slashes, diving in between the two scythe like claws and rolling as I landed, putting me to the side of the unwounded craw. I stabbed out at its body, and my spear sunk in a ways, but was nearly pulled out of my arms as it turned to face me, the spear ending up dragging a cut along the craw’s body as it did so.

    I stepped back to the edge of it’s range, and nearly missed the other craw swinging at me with its wounded arm. I noticed it too late however, and the only thing I could do was get my arm up a bit to try and block it. I was expecting another cut like the one I had gotten before, but this time on my spell casting arm, but it barely cut through my armor before the arm collapsed, my force bolts and stabs having drastically reduced its integrity.

    I got a predatory smile on my face, with only three limbs between the two of them, I was reasonably confident that I could take them, even if I may still end up a bit wounded. Deciding to focus on the one with the wounded arm, I circled towards the ruined arm, trying to make it harder for it to hit me and trying to keep it between me and the other craw.

    The other craw started moving around as fast as it could, walking sideways as fast as it could forwards, but after dodging the swing of the unwounded arm, I had time to sink in my weapon twice before it was able to bring it to bear again.

    The other craw reached me at this point however, and I had to jump to the side, mostly avoiding the claws, and getting a slice in the side of my chest. Feeling a slight trickle of blood slowly fall down my chest, I stabbed out again at the wounded craw, causing it to flinch back in pain this time. I ducked down again as the other one launched a claw through the space where my head had been, and prepared an ice spike. I released it as soon as I was back up, sending it flying down the gullet of the wounded craw.

    The wounded one collapsed from the ice spear, and I turned my attention the the other one, stabbing outwards at its arm once it had gone flying past me. Deciding to use this one as spear practice, and to see how long it would take me to kill it without using magic, I slowly whittled it down, only taking one more scratch on my chest before finishing it off.

    As the fight ended, I got a very welcome message, I had leveled up once again. I debated for a moment, but this time put the point into vitality, as I needed to have at least a little more survivability.

I slowly lured the other groups of two, and would take care of them mostly the same way, but I discovered that an ice spike along with a force bolt would actually blow off their arms completely, so I soon switched to doing that rather than  simply launching force bolts. Each time, I would use the second one as spear practice, and I slowly got better, towards the end of the day, I was so used to their patterns I felt I could fight one in my sleep.

After I’d yawned a few too many times, I went back to my small campsite, cooked up some craw meat, and slowly faded into my meditative trance that I was slowly becoming more comfortable with reaching.

I awoke in the morning to yet more good news. I’d gained a point in vitality from all the beatings I had taken, a point in strength, and two points in agility, likely from all the spear practice I had been doing. I put a big grin on my face and decided to open up my stat page to see how I was doing.

Name

Rayth

Level

13

str 5

Grimoire

agi 5

Recipes

wis 16

???

end 5

???

vit 7

???

    I was starting to look like a proper mage, rather than the magic warrior I was now focused on, but I had enough vitality to take a hit or two, and the points elsewhere would give me enough stats to at least be comfortable with melee combat. Training had its upsides, putting me well above the standard stats from my level, though I’m sure most people got some stats from their live fighting as well.

    Deciding to do some more training when I got back to the city, I went off to the cavern, ready to collect some more craw for levels and stats. When I arrived at the cavern, I noticed something worrying, there was only one group of two craw left, the rest of them were all in groups of three, something I was unsure of how to take on.

    Deciding to deal with it later, I grabbed the last group of two, and hunted them down the same way I had hunted the rest of them. After I’d finished them off and collected my loot, I sat down, wondering how I was going to handle three of them.

    After around half an hour of deliberation, I realized I was an idiot. There was only room enough in the tunnel for two of them side by side, so if I stayed in the middle blocking off the passage, only two of them could attack me at once.

    Deciding to try it out to make sure, as the worst thing that could happen would be me respawning, I Went off to the cavern, took a deep breath, and aggroed a group of three. I dragged them back to the passage, and stood in the middle, leaving not quite enough room to my left and right for them to get by. I blew off the arm of one of the ones in front, and kept dodging to the left right and backwards, with an occasion step in and under their sharp scythe like appendages.

    After eliminating the unwounded one with the rest of my mana, as I wanted to keep the number of arms I would be facing down to three, the other stepped forwards, and I took a deep breath, this would be the first time I faced two of them with no mana, and only my spear to keep me safe.

    After fighting for a while, I seemed to be doing comfortably well, and decided against taking one of my mana pots, instead slowly whittling them down with my spear. Occasionally, when my mana had regenerated enough, I would cast a force bolt into their faces, one time missing and hitting the eye stalks, causing two of the four to explode in a spattering of gore, covering me with very nasty looking parts of eye.

    Eventually, I finished the both of them off, and took a few deep breaths as I leaned against the wall. Towards the end I had been forced to take one of my stamina potions, or I would have run out of stamina and been easy prey. Checking my stock, I only had one stamina potion left, but after meandering back to my campsite to check on my now dried out herbs, I had enough to make 7 stamina potions, or fourteen diluted ones which should be good enough.

    Deciding that I would do that after I had used up my second stamina potion, I went off to collect another group of three.

    This time, I decided to use up one of my mana potions, as I had plenty of herbs to make new ones, and finished the fight without running out of stamina, simply spamming ice spears until two of them had died, and picking on the last one with my spear.

    The rest of the day proceeded in much the same fashion, aggroing groups of craw and killing them while using up either mana or stamina potions to keep myself in the fight long enough to finish them all off. Eventually I got to one last group of craw. I was yawning, but decided to finish off at least this group before going to bed.

    This group was easy to kill off, using one of my mana potions and repeatedly sending ice spears at the center of mass of the craw until they died, while the last one I took on with my spear, but ended up getting a nasty gash in my chest in the process as I noticed one of its swings too late.

    Deciding to head to bed before exploring what lay beyond the cavern, I remade the mana potion I had used up, leaving me with only a couple of herbs, and went to sleep, this time being unsuccessful in reaching the state I had almost become used to.

    I woke up in the morning refreshed, but disappointed I had been unable to reach that state of meditation and sleep I wanted. My disappointment was short lived however, as I got a pop up informing me I had gained a point in endurance.

    While wondering if my usage of stamina potions had any effect on the gain of endurance, I packed up all my stuff and wandered back to the cavern I had become familiar with. Looking around satisfied at how I had emptied out the place once filled with monsters, I wondered why they wouldn’t respawn. Supposing it had to do with me being camped out so close by, I looked around, searching for another exit.

    I soon found it, another tunnel similar to the one I had come from, but heading upwards at a slope. Excited, I ran towards it, and started walking up it at a fast pace. The tunnel went on for quite some time, but eventually I saw something that cheered me up immensely.

    Light was shining down through the tunnel, and not the faint glowing light that I had become used to from the small barnacle like creatures that inhabited the cave. I sped up, and soon reached the entrance, only to notice something that seemed like trouble.

    There was an absolutely massive craw right at the entrance. I slowly stepped back, hoping it didn’t notice me, then deliberated on what to do. I considered for a moment if I should try to fight it or sneak by it, but the decision was pretty easy.

    I felt I’d become used to the attack patterns of the craw, and the worst that could happen would be respawning with a loss of gold, and all the loot in my backpack would easily make up for that.

    I took a deep breath, checked all my potions, then headed out, it was time to fight.