Chapter 7 - Attack of the Chinchillycorns!
Tutorial World #336: Day 1
Doc took several tentative steps onto the rocky area before the dark grove. He could feel the eyes of predators looking at him from beyond the edge of darkness, making each step forward heavier and heavier. He wasn’t sure about this “plan” now that he was out in the open and Grizz was nowhere to be seen. It had seemed like such a good idea, trapping wild monsters without much fighting required.
But now he was standing before the inevitable threat, his life possibly on the line. Literally, on a line of silk. He had made himself the live bait that hopefully these monsters couldn’t refuse. As soon as the fluff balls emerged and began to attack, Grizz was going to yank him back as quickly as possible. So, Doc had wandered out, one step at a time, towards the danger. Nothing happened at first. The normal sounds of the breeze running through the trees and insects harmonizing with each other had continued like normal. All until he was about fifteen feet away from the grove. He had begun to hear weird barking noises coming from the trees and the ambient temperature started to drop precipitously. Doc thought he was probably about as close as he was going to get. He knelt slowly, trying to show a bit of deference to the magic-casting rodents.
In front of the chemistry teacher, five of the beasts hopped up. Of the five, four were about a foot tall and 2 feet long. Their luxuriously soft, blue granite-colored fur was pristine and they exuded a certain amount of menace. The fifth was half again as large as the others, an alpha for the pack of social creatures. All five had a small horn on the crown of their head that looked to have been recently sharpened and a tail that trailed behind them, as light as a feather. The alpha bared its wickedly sharp, dark orange teeth and barked orders to its minions. The small force of rodents readied themselves to leap at the stupid human that had walked into their territory. All at once, shit got crazy.
The alpha cast some sort of spell that sent a cold projectile toward Doc, a sign for the others to follow the ice shard and attack. They leaped forward, majestic horns pointing dangerously toward where Doc was. Except, when the chinchillycorns made it to that spot, Doc was no longer there, having been yanked back by Grizz once the action had begun. Doc might not have been there, but he had left a present for them to find. White, sticky webbing shot out three meters in all directions, capturing the four leaping chinchillycorns in the adhesive mess. The alpha had just been out of reach of the trap so remained free, but it was furious. It started making little irritated chuffing noises.
Doc and Grizz had also been intentionally out of the trap's radius, so they kept an eye out on the alpha as they started their attack on the beasts underneath the web. Before they had started their little trap, Grizz had a bout of genius. Finding a short branch to be a handle, Grizz had attached a long strand of webbing to one end. The summon had then found a fist-sized stone and attached it to the other end of the web. With several sharp shards of rock sprinkled around the stone, the ursarachnid had been able to design an ugly-looking whip that could be used to reach creatures caught in the middle of the trap. It was a weird, deadly form of fly fishing that could absolutely go wrong.
Doc raised the terrifying weapon and sent the deadly payload forward. Doc had forgotten that silk webbing was elastic.
As the stone end flew forward, it overshot the beasts trapped in the middle of the sticky web. Once it had stretched its maximum distance, though, it came rocketing back toward him. Doc dropped like a sack of potatoes to dodge the incoming, flying death. He did not escape unscathed. Doc’s health dropped by 8 points as one of the sharp rock protrusions scored his back.
Doc winced in pain as his flesh was torn, thinking back to his cowboy phase in college. He had watched YouTube video after YouTube video on how to crack a whip. He and his friends would take turns smacking objects out of each other’s hands. It was incredibly stupid in hindsight, but what else are the college years for if not for regretful, life-threatening choices?
He started thinking about the basics the instructor had discussed. It was important to make sure that everything was going straight, otherwise, the end of the whip would have horizontal motion added and would most likely hit the user. Thinking back to his first attempt, Doc realized that his sidearm approach had been a disaster in the making. He was lucky to have not killed himself. Readying the whip for another, more vertical strike, he flung the sticky webbing forward one more time, praying to anyone and everyone that he would live to see the next day.
The whip’s strike flew forward lightning-fast, screaming death as it reached toward an entangled chinchillycorn. The stone projectile crashed along the right side of one of the monsters, and, despite the near miss, it wrought devastation on the small, unarmored creature. A small squeak escaped the creature’s mouth as it was pulped and slashed by the wicked end of the whip.
The alpha had remained at the entrance of the grove, unwilling to move forward and enter the fray once the trap had been deployed. It seemed as though it was protecting something precious inside the dark, foreboding grove. Seeing one of its comrades get destroyed by the actions of the human riled the creature up into a frenzy, though, and the alpha tore forward with terrifying speed, racing along the side of the trap toward Doc. He had just enough time to drop the whip, grab his knife, and ready himself for the alpha’s unwanted personal display of affection.
The giant chinchillycorn launched itself, horn first, toward Doc’s center of mass. Doc was just able to deflect the speedy creature away from his heart and into his left shoulder. The horn entered his body, penetrating his relatively weak skin, and exiting out of the back of his arm. The wound was ghastly as the horn destroyed the muscle within, leaving behind an unnatural, biting coldness.
As soon as it had finished stabbing Doc, it pressed its strong hind legs against his chest and launched itself away, shoving Doc down toward the webbing trap. Doc screamed as pain seared through his arm. The appendage was useless and he had gotten caught with part of his upper body stuck to the web trap that he had set himself. While his right arm and legs weren’t on the sticky substance, the rest of his body couldn’t move an inch. He prepared to try and shield himself against another attack when Grizz finally made his appearance.
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Grizz had originally held back to watch any chinchillycorn that had not been trapped. While Doc was using the deadly whip, Grizz couldn’t get onto the web to attack any of the beasts that had gotten entangled, so he waited until he could engage with the alpha or had free range into the middle of his web trap. With the alpha heading toward Doc with obvious rage-fueled aggression, Grizz had quickly moved forward to dispatch the three remaining chinchillycorns. Chinchillycorns had terrible vitality and resistance and were only a threat to Grizz and Doc because of how fast they were. Taking away their mobility sapped them of most of their offensive options. Being trapped under webbing meant that they couldn’t direct their magical ice toward what they couldn’t see. Grizz took pity on the trapped creatures and ended their lives with three swipes of his deadly claws.
It was at this point that Doc screamed out in pain and Grizz looked around in horror to see what had happened. The alpha had just impaled Doc in the arm and then jumped away to set up a new angle of attack. Grizz, furious at both himself and Doc for letting this happen, used his strong, piston-like spider legs to jump forward and block his master from another, more devastating attack. Grizz roared at the chinchillycorn in warning, not afraid to tear it limb from limb.
The alpha jumped back farther after the arrival of the spider bear. It had never seen something so fierce. With 12 different legs, it was hard to keep an eye on all of them. The horn on the alpha began to glow blue and Grizz felt the ground underneath him tremble as he was shot up into the sky. The chinchillycorn had created an ice pillar to fling Grizz high into the sky. Wasting no time while the monstrous ursarachnid couldn’t change directions in the air, it shot three quick ice spikes toward Grizz’s body.
Ten feet in the air with nothing to grab on to avoid the attack, Grizz pulled some of his legs in to protect himself from the spiky intrusions. The ice spikes crashed hard into the impromptu leg shield, one slipping past the interlocking legs, and driving into Grizz’s side. He growled in pain. Grizz crashed into the ground, unable to move his legs out of the leg shield in time to catch himself. Using the momentum of the fall, he rolled himself toward the alpha, intending to close the distance with the speedy creature. Grizz looked up to lock on to his target when he saw the large alpha chinchillycorn tip over with a knife sticking out of its side. Doc had used the distraction of Grizz to fling his knife toward the distracted alpha.
Grizz looked back at Doc in surprise. He couldn’t believe that he had been able to throw that knife with that kind of accuracy, considering the fact that Doc was both wounded and slightly bound up. That high Luck stat had to be kicking in hard at the moment.
You know you are a lucky bastard, right, Grizz harumphed. There is no way you could make that throw again.
Doc laughed out loud, a hoarse barking noise that turned into a coughing fit. “Don’t be jealous of my mad awesome knife-wielding skill. You just wish you had opposable thumbs like me.” Doc pointed the opposable digit towards himself in a mocking gesture
Grizz, shaking his shaggy head, went to check out the alpha while Doc took a minute or five to calm down from another intense fight. The alpha wasn’t dead and it had actually started crawling back toward its den in the dark grove, unwilling to stop protecting the grove. The knife looked to have been a perfect throw, expertly or, more likely, luckily penetrating the side and hitting the spine and paralyzing its back legs. Grizz reached out and bopped it on the head with enough force to knock it unconscious. He dragged the body of the formidable creature over to Doc.
Do you want to try this again? Grizz asked Doc, thinking that the alpha would make for a great fighting partner. The rest of the creatures that were hiding in the dark haven’t come out yet, but I can feel them scabbling underground. It seems as though we scared them away by defeating the boss.
Doc let out a deep, pained sigh. “Give me just a moment. That fucking chinchilla stabbed me.”
Doc couldn’t feel his left arm anymore and he was stuck to a sticky web trap. He had been left deserted on an unknown world to become a “leader” or whatever and all he was really finding was death. Death was around every corner, reaching out its spindly, skeletal arm towards Doc. The stress of the pain and frustrations of what he was going through began to creep in on his psyche and he was struggling to stay focused. He needed to heal up quickly. Looking back at his inventory, Doc reached for the red potion and identified the small vial.
You have identified: Weak Healing Draught
Common
Look out! You have taken damage and might not survive much longer. This Weak Healing Draught will fix your right up. It tastes like cherries and will heal up to 20% of your health over the next sixty seconds.
Doc opened his mouth and drained the surprisingly delicious liquid down his throat, savoring the sickly sweet flavor. Immediately, the pain his body was feeling began to subside as the wound in his left arm began to knit back together and close up. Despite having lost almost 60 HP during the small skirmish, Doc was feeling lucky to be alive. Grizz was right that his luck was working in overdrive right now. He needed to take advantage of it and hopefully tame his first monster
“I need help getting out of this webbing if you would be so kind,” Doc requested, feeling significantly better.
Grizz shuffled over and grabbed Doc and the webbing and began using his claws to cut the human out of the sticky mess. Soon, Doc was back on his feet and he paced over to the alpha who was still knocked unconscious.
The chinchillycorn’s rasping breath was concerning to Doc and he didn’t want the large rodent to suffer any longer, even though it had just spent the last five or so minutes trying to kill him. Doc started the casting, his right hand moving around in the same intricate patterns as before when he failed to tame the grinkled ape. He knew this time would be different, though. The blue glow illuminated his hands and the alpha, making a connection. This time there was a twinge of understanding that passed between the tamer and the monster’s soul.
Congratulations! You have successfully tamed Uncommon Chinchillycorn. Check your Summon Card Carrying Case for more information about your tamed monster.