S13, Of Spawners and Monsters

Clank.

I stopped a vertical slash from Terence, but I had to position one of my hands on the blade to do so, A dangerous move when done with real blades. Terence was pushing down with quite a bit of strength, despite having a lighter blade his strikes had a lot of power behind them.

We looked at each other for a moment, once we disengaged Terence would have the advantage, I needed to pull back. The instant I felt Terence stop pushing I stepped back to regain my stance. Yet Terence didn’t give me any room, he was already coming, swinging his blade in a downward diagonal slash.

Clink.

I deflected his strike with my blade just in time and retreated once again. Then I did a horizontal swipe that Terence seemed to evade without much trouble.

Swoosh.

My strike had passed by Terence only touching air and he was already coming at me. I lifted my sword in a hurry, barely managing to block in time.

Clank.

This time the collision shook my arms and almost knocked me off balance.

‘Damn! How is he so fast?’

I didn’t know how Terence was capable of moving so swiftly. His speed and strength had somehow improved a lot since our first sparring. If I didn’t go on the offensive I would lose. I decided to bet it all and attack with a combination of powerful strikes. Hoping I would be able to overwhelm him.

Clink, clank, clank! Clink.

Despite my efforts Terence guarded against all of them.

“Take it easy Simon, we still have to go into the dungeon this evening.” He told me with a slightly troubled look.

He was right, the day before had been our first time going inside the caves. I needed preserve my stamina to hunt the monster Instructor Remme had promised us.

Both of us decided to take a rest from the training. But if we had kept going I was sure I would have the advantage as Terence apparently had less endurance than me. I drank a sip from my waterskin while watching Falnid and Bolton strike a log with their spears. Then I saw a group of five trainees approaching us. The one in front was a blonde boy with short hair who seemed just a bit younger than me. He was smiling at us and walking in a way that oozed confidence.

“Hey! I’m Stroud of Buskdorf,” The trainee on the lead raised his hand in an informal salute and introduced himself. “Your sparring right now was incredible. Were did you learn to wield your swords like that?”

“Hello, I’m Terence of Flodbred, nice to meet you.” Terence promptly put on his best smile and took care of the conversation. “If you are talking about my paltry skills my father used to be a soldier, he taught me most of what I know.”

“Do you call that paltry?” The boy, Stroud, arched an eyebrow and left out a big smile. “Where I’m from there are no one with such skills, maybe the captain of the guard was that good in his prime, but he is an old coot now. What about you?” He asked me.

“Uh, I’m Simon of Sudken,”I said a bit nervous, I were not good at dealing with this kind of intense and outgoing people. “I was also taught by my father. He is a hunter, though.”

“Nice ta meet ya, Terence and Simon!” Stroud spoke in a casual dialect and patted both our shoulders effusively. “I’m sure both your parents are impressive men.” The trainee came a bit closer and spoke in a lower voice, “By the way, do you mind if I ask? Are you the group that got rid of the dungeon dogs?”

“Yes, we are.” Terence answered curtly and his expression darkened. That was a matter none of us liked to talk about.

“Oh, my condolences, I heard it was quite the unsavory situation.” Stroud composed his face. “Even so, for you to come unscathed from it is a testament to your ability. We are still having trouble with the feral rats.” To my surprise his last remark seemed genuine as I felt a tinge of chagrin from his tone.

“It’s not us, it’s Rupert who has problems with the rats.” Another trainee wearing a mischievous grin chimed in chimed in with a sharp remark.

“Shut up Bert, I’m the vanguard, I would like to see you in my position.” A boy almost as big as Bolton protested with an annoyed expression.

“You two, be quiet!” Stroud commanded them, he was obviously the one leading the group. “Ugh, ignore those two, they are always quarreling. Anyway, I wanted to ask you if you want to train together. Having more people can help us improve our spars, I feel like I’m getting stuck always practicing with the same guys.”

That was true, I had also felt that I had improved quite a bit since I began to spar with Terence, I was better now compared to when I had left the mountains.

“I see no problem with your proposal, but we can’t do it today, we have to go into the caves after lunch.” Terence answered formally using a polite smile.

“Yuck, today there is that fish paste again,” Another of the trainees from Stroud’s group muttered to himself.

“Wow, you are already exploring the deeper area,” Stroud exclaimed with a surprised expression. “We don’t even know when our instructor will decide to lead us down there. I don’t think any of the other groups is close to enter the caves. Well, since you are busy we will go back to train, I will come ask you another day, good luck down there!”

“Oh, they are already leaving,” Falnid’s slightly dissapointed voice came from behind.

“Are you also done with your practice?” Terence inquired.

“Yes, we just finished,” Bolton answered.

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“Then lets go back to our room, we should rest a bit before lunchtime.”

…

We were traveling along the caves again, at a spot not far from the entrance, shortly after passing the first fork.

After turning a corner a mass of big scaly fruits… No, big scaly eggs, came into sight. They were yellow, with some green mixed in, and no less than three feet long. They occupied the walls and ceiling of a hollow on the left side of the cave, the cluster itself was about fifteen feet wide and ten feet high, with enough space in the middle for me to stand with my arms wide open. The first word that comes to my mind was ‘Grotesque.’

At the sides of the hollow there were multiple signs, most of them warning not to use fire here, not to approach, and extreme danger.

“Whoa!” Falnid exclaimed, looking at the eggs with childish curiosity.

“This is where monsters are born, we call it a spawner,” Instructor Remme began lecturing us. “They are situated at the tips of some dungeon roots, like the ones we saw yesterday. All the monsters in the dungeon are born from sacks similar to these. If you look at their features you can guess what kind of monster comes out of them. This one gives birth to dungeon lizards. Rat spawners, for example, are slightly smaller and have dark brown fur. Meanwhile, ground reptid ones have darker green scales.”

“If we wait here long enough a dungeon lizard will be born,” Instructor Remme continued.“It normally takes a couple hours for one to appear. If you ever need to practice or find food this is not a bad spot, but you shouldn’t try to sell their parts. Even if the creatures look fully mature the skin of recently born lizards is not very hard, same for their claws. On the other hand, their meat is quite tender.”

There were about a hundred eggs here, if a monster was born every two hours, then… I tried to calculate how long did a monster need to grow inside these eggs.

“So it takes only eight days for a monster to mature inside these sacks, is that right?” Terence spoke before I could end my calculations.

“More or less, sometimes a spawner may stop birthing monsters for a few days.” Instructor Remme answered. “Also different monsters need different times. Rats are born a lot faster, in about four or five days.”

“Which monsters take the longest to get born?” Falnid asked while raising his spear. He clearly wanted to poke one of the eggs.

Instructor Remme shot him a serious look before explaining. “Normally bigger monsters take more time, but kobolds, for example, mature slowly, despite starting quite small. Other than common monsters, dungeon guardians are probably the slower ones, taking months to mature.”

Dungeon guardians, Father had told me they were unique monsters that always appeared in the same spot inside the dungeon. When that happened many adventurers would cooperate together to take them down.

“Apart from the monsters that come out of them, you should also remember that spawners are very dangerous.” Instructor Remme threw a meaningful glance at Falnid while saying this. “You should never get near one. If you want to catch a newborn wait for it to walk away from the sacks or lure it. If you approach or disturb the spawner tentacles will appear from the back of the hollow and catch you. They are black, fast like whips, thick as a human leg, and with a lot of claws that will bite into you. Nasty things. They have enough strength to crush steel armor, and if you somehow survive long enough they will drag you to a mouth in their base.”

“What can we do if they grab us?” Falnid inquired.

“Make sure they don’t,” Instructor Remme answered with a dead serious expression. “If you ever need to destroy one of them the safest and easiest way is to burn it form afar using oil. Even then, it’s better if you don’t mess with them. If they are damaged they will trigger an attack from all nearby monsters, same thing that happens with the dungeon roots. By the way don’t do anything to this one, the guild uses it to teach the trainees. It should be clear by the signs at its sides.”

“What if, after being careful and all, it still grabs us?” Falnid asked curiously.

Instructor Remme left out a sigh and muttered up his patience before answering. “Years ago a group of trainees disappeared, after looking for a few days someone found a spear on the floor near a crevice in the wall, inside they discovered a spawner. We burned it to the ground, but never found find any other remains from the adventurers. If a tentacle grabs you it will probably kill you before your companions can rescue you. In fact, the most probably outcome is that everyone that gets near it will end up crushed and eaten by them.”

“I… I see.” Falnid was a bit pale after hearing Instructor Remme’s short story.

“Now that you understood it let’s go find some monster for you to hunt.” Instructor Remme guided us back to one of the forked paths that descended with a gentle slope, we passed by the dungeon root from the other day and kept going.

“Now that we are here I will tell you how to tell apart kobold scouts from vagrant kobolds,” Instructor Remme started speaking after a while. “Both are the most basic, non promoted, form of kobolds. They look very similar to a rat, but are bigger and walk on two legs. There are other small differences with rats, like their human like hands, and the varied sounds they make.”

“Anyway, vagrant kobolds are mostly newborns or individuals that aren’t part of a group,” Instructor Remme continued. “They normally don’t wear clothes and if they have weapons they tend to be simple bones, wielded as clubs. Those are quite safe to kill. On the other hand kobold scouts are those that have joined a pack or community. They settle in camps or bigger settlements and don simple clothes made of monster hides or pelts. Their weapons range from simple bone clubs to bone daggers, spears, and stone clubs. They also have slings in many cases, so you have to watch out for ranged attacks.”

I had heard from Father’s stories that their ability to use slings was the most dangerous one. A lucky shot on the head could easily knock down or even kill an unlucky adventure, not even our helmets would be a good guarantee against them.

“I already warned you yesterday to avoid them, specially the kobold scouts. Their communities have kobold hunters, that are about twice as tall and a lot more cunning. They are the ones that do most of the crafts in the village and sometimes tame other monsters to help them hunt. There are also more promoted forms that can give iron adventurers a run for their money, but you will rarely encounter any of those here.”

“How can we avoid them?” I asked, concerned that we could unknowingly ran into a group of the dangerous monsters.

“Take a good look at the marks on the walls and go back if you see any scouts. They normally don’t hunt too far away from their settlements.”

After a while Instructor Remme guided us to a lateral passage and started inspecting the ground. “It should be here.” He said advancing slowly with his eyes fixed on the dusty spots. “Oh, there it is.” He crouched and took something from the floor. “Look at this, it’s a remnant of a varans hide. They normally eat most of their old skin when they shed, but there are always some bits left behind. You can see how the scales are bigger than those of a lizard.” He said showing us a small piece of molt.

We examined it, it was whitish and almost translucent. Due to its lack of color the only way to determine which monster had shed it was looking at the shape of the scale, as Instructor Remme has advised.

“Well, now is your turn to work,” Instructor Remme declared. “In the corridors there are few species and the monsters are quite close to each other, but down here, if you want to catch a valuable prey you will need to track it. Show me what you are capable of.”

‘Nice!’ I could finally put to use another of my specialties. I had been tracking wild beast since I was a small kid, learning their habits and how to spot the traces they left behind. “I will do it Instructor Remme!” I exclaimed excitedly in the most formal tone I could muster.

I took the piece of shed skin from his hands and examined it, it was almost indistinguishable from that of a forest varan. Given its state the creature had been here no more than a day ago. I also had learned from asking the instructors that the monsters in the dungeon tended to have smaller territories than the beasts from outside. It seemed to have something to do with the fact that inside the dungeon there was more prey as well as more dangers and competitors.

I started scouting our surroundings. The ground was quite hard, but in some of the dirt patches there were claw marks left by a monster’s feet. Outside I had seen similar ones many times.

“It should be in this direction,” I informed everyone. “Follow me and try to not make any noise.”

“Don’t forget to look for another dangers,” Remme warned me.

“Alright, lets advance in formation, but I will take the lead until we find the dungeon varan.”

“Alright,” Bolton agreed, swapping our positions.

We walked in silence, Bolton and Falnid took care of our flanks while Terence protected the rear. There was no vegetation here to hide the traces of our prey, but the darkness complicated the job. I followed the tracks with relative ease. There were many traces to follow, it was obvious the monster frequented this area. The only difficulty was to tell apart its newest trails.

I gave signaled the others when to advance and when to stop, and little by little I began choose our way with more confidence.

“It has to be near, get ready.” I said in a low voice.

My companions tensed up and we quietly prepared our weapons.

“I will leave the command to you Simon, you have more experience hunting beasts,” Terence told me. This was something we had already agreed on while we discussed about better ways to deal with monsters following the dungeon dog’s incident.

“Alright, the most dangerous parts are the head and the tail, Bolton and I will keep its head occupied, the rest will depend on the terrain. If possible, we need to find a spacious place to fight.”

“It seems this is going to be a bit dungerous.” Falnid chuckled at his own joke.

I ignored him and concentrated in what was ahead. Soon we arrived at a wider cave, this would be the perfect place to fight. There was enough space for us to move around and encircle the beast. If things went awry we could retreat to the passage we just entered from. Looking around we spotted the monster sleeping inside a small opening at the back of the cave. There were no other monsters in sight.

The sleeping creature was probably more than ten feet long, with brown scales on its upper half and yellow ones under its belly. There were two rows of bigger and rougher scales that began on top of its eyes and went all the way to the tip of its tail. I couldn’t accurately tell its height, but based on other similar beasts I had hunted its head probably reached around my waist. Unlike lizards, varans had longer legs and walked with their bodies raised from the floor. This made their movements faster, but not as swift as those of a dog. They also had difficulties to turn in place, they could only rely on their neck and their tail to fend dangers coming from their sides.

“Everyone, get ready.” I whispered as the reptile started showing signs of having detected our presence.