Chapter 95: Bloody fights
Felix Sythias’ POV:
We climbed down the wall and into the cavern. The trees were smaller than they had looked from above, but they were still plenty big. The first thing we did was make a small base of sorts. It was really just a corner of the cave we put our stuff at, then surrounded it by some logs from already fallen trees. With this many monsters around, we wanted a safe place we could return too, and this was better than having nothing at all.
Alex also quickly gathered some firewood for later, so we wouldn’t have to worry about that when we got hungry. We only had a small amount of jerky left, after all. When that was all done, we were off to scout the area. We had a very tight deadline—literally—but we still couldn’t rush. Scouting the area was the bare minimum we should do.
Rather quickly, we ran into a major issue. The monsters here were stronger than we had expected. Even the lowest leveled monster was level 14, and that was here at the far end of the cave. Who knew how powerful the big monsters over by the lake would be. The only upside was that the monsters here had poor eyesight, which made me believe they came from another, darker cave.
“So, how do we want to handle this?” I asked Alex.
Alex thought for a moment, looking between the monsters near us, the water in the distance, and where the tunnel continued. “If we continue down the tunnel, we won’t know when we’ll find water again, so I think we should definitely try to get it. But the monsters by the lake are probably too strong for us as we are now. Let’s level up for a while here, then try to break through to quickly grab some water and run? We can probably get in and out without getting killed, right?”
I shrugged. “I can run fast enough. And if you could defend me while I did so… yeah, we should be able to pull that off.”
He nodded. “We’ll do that, then. What do you think is best? Killing a bunch of weaker monsters, or killing a few strong ones?”
I hesitated, unsure. Killing a bunch of weaker monsters would be a lot safer, but we had so little time left. And getting levels from killing a bunch of weak monsters would take a lot longer than we had time for, as was proven by the entirety of the past week. We’d spent several hours each day going around and killing weak monsters. It did not give many levels. Near the end of the week it took three hours for just a single one, and we didn’t have that long now. We had maybe half a day of water left, and probably less if we exerted ourselves—like fighting a ton of weaker monsters.
So that didn’t leave much choice.
“We’ll need to fight strong monsters,” I said, then explained my reasoning. Alex nodded in agreement, so I continued, “It’s probably for the best anyway, as I think I can kill a lot of monsters here with one shot of my lightning breath. As long as you get a single hit in, all that experience will be yours.”
“Alright, shall we get started, then?”
I nodded, and we set off. Thanks to all the monster’s weak eyesight, we could get past a lot of them undetected. And the ones that did spot us were easily taken care of with a quick swipe of my talons. Soon, we’d made it over a third into the cave and were finally coming across monsters worth spending time on. We searched around a little while until we found something that would be an easy fight and found a worthy monster rather quickly.
We laid inside a large shrub, watching the large cat-spider weave its web. The silken strings were almost as thick as rope and created a maze between the trees. Or at least, they would’ve if I couldn’t just cut them apart like they were normal spiderwebs. The webbing wasn’t even sticky, just tough.
The cat-spider was about the size of a small bear and was level 31 according to Alex. If it hadn’t been for my new attack that could literally crush boulders, we wouldn’t even have dared to approach the beast. It was stronger than even the dire-bear had been a month ago. Even now, we didn’t dare to move until we had the perfect opportunity.
It only took a few minutes for said opportunity to present itself. The cat-spider had turned away to repair a bit of its web that I’d purposefully cut. Now, with it looking away, I could risk starting to charge the breath attack without alerting it.
I glanced at Alex “You ready?” I whispered at him, and he gave me a thumbs-up. His part in this fight was going to be the most dangerous one. Before I released my attack, he would need to swoop in to land a significant hit. He couldn’t just lob a stone and get all the experience.
I began charging my attack while Alex carefully unsheathed his sword. He held it in front of him and sneaked forwards, careful not to rustle the bush we were in too much. The spider, not paying any attention to threats while within the very core of its nest, didn’t notice Alex until he was right upon it. He struck forwards, and, with some effort, pierced the creature’s tough hide and chitin. I saw a flash of blue lightning come forth from the wound as Alex used his own lightning magic, and the spider spasmed slightly. Alex used that as an opportunity to dodge back and barely avoid a swipe from one of the spider’s eight cat-legs.
The spider hissed in fury and crouched to pounce at Alex, but it didn’t matter. It was too slow to dodge my lightning breath. I released the attack just before it jumped and the vibrant bolt jumped forwards and burned a hole straight through the beast. One small bolt jumped from the beast to Alex, but his new magic resistance Skill warded it off. And unlike before with Alex’s own attack, this time, the beast fell to the forest floor with all its legs spasming and twitching like crazy while its insides burned and charred. The smell was horrible, like burnt hair and pork, but it was nothing compared to when Tiki’s fire-trap had gone off.
Over the span of a few seconds, the spasming reduced, and soon, the spider stopped moving all together. I glanced at Alex.
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“It’s dead,” he said. “I got two levels from it.”
I nodded, he must have been close to leveling up already. “Alright, let’s get out of here then, before something comes to see what’s up.”
We quickly gathered our stuff, then cut ourselves out of the spider web maze. We found ourselves another large bush a few hundred meters away and sat down inside to hide. We talked over Alex’s gains for a moment while I let my mana recover a bit. He was level 21 now, only a few levels away from finally getting to choose a Path. I looked forward to it, and from the way Alex talked about it, so did he. More importantly, however, was that it meant a rather big jump in power for him. And we needed that desperately.
He also gained another level in [Draconic lightning magic] and two in [Draconic magic resistance], bringing them to level 15 and 4, respectively. It was a good thing he had the resistance Skill now. This fight would’ve gone a lot worse if he hadn’t been able to just shrug the side-effects of my attack off. I would need to keep that in mind for the future, though. We couldn’t have him stumbling because of an unexpected shock during a fight, let alone if we fought alongside others. I needed to control my lightning better, or aim in such a way my allies wouldn’t be hit by any lightning jumping away from the point of impact.
We rested for another ten minutes, during which we both drank a bit of recycled water and washed the taste down with a quick bite of our dwindling supply of jerky. Alex had only half a bottle recycled water remaining, so that meant I too would only have half a bottle remaining. We needed to move faster, because if we ran out before we could get more, we would probably have to resort to drinking monster blood like we were vampires, just for the water inside it.
It would be a shitty solution, as monster blood often contained diseases or toxins that Alex would likely not be able to handle, but it would be the only option we would have left. We had already tried to see if we could get any water from the trees and plants around here, but they were all incredibly toxic and I didn’t know of a way to separate the water from the poison. That, and the plants here were also just really dry. But I knew for a fact blood contained a lot of water. The diseases would be an issue, though.
Unless… huh, that might work. I could drink the blood without issue. My digestive tract worked way different from anyone else’s, and the diseases would just be killed off and absorbed. Then the water would be safely processed. Then Alex could drink my blood, instead. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, but that was what we had hoped about drinking urine, too. I’d keep the possibility in mind for when the time came.
We rested for a little longer, letting our nerves settle and our mana replenish a bit, then we set out to find the next monster. This time, it took a lot longer to find a suitable monster. To our great annoyance, many monsters here had some kind of metal scales or had way too many eyes or other senses and would see us coming before we even noticed it was there to begin with. By the time we found another monster, my mana-pool had filled back up entirely.
This monster was more akin to the wolves of the third floor. They usually roamed in packs, but this one had been thrown out just a few minutes before. It was still looking down the hill at its previous pack retreating further into the forest. I would’ve felt bad for it, if it wasn’t for the streaks of blood on its snout and the pile of half-eaten dead cubs at its feet. The cubs didn’t look like they were canine, but I couldn’t be sure. And who knew where it had gotten them from. Monsters always spawned fully adult and had no way to procreate.
We watched until the pack retreated behind the hill and ambushed the wolf. It howled in anger when Alex suddenly drove his blade deep into the wolf’s side. This monster was weaker than the spider and its hide was less tough, so Alex managed to tear a long gash into its flank. The wolf, bleeding heavily now, spun around to swipe at Alex, but he had long since stepped away again, already prepared to either strike back or defend himself.
If it had been any other time or situation, I would’ve let Alex kill the monster himself. Despite the level difference, the monster was weak. That was probably why its pack abandoned it, too. I was sure Alex could take it in a fight. But we didn’t have the resources for such a luxury right now, so a quick death it was.
Alex jumped back from the monster, and I released my charged breath attack. The wolf turned to face me at the last second, so the bolt burned a hole straight through its skull, down its neck, and halfway through his body before its energy dissipated. It fell to the ground, instantly dead.
Alex nodded at me. “It’s dead.”
I stared at him. “You think?”
He chuckled a bit. “I got another level from it. I’m now level 22.”
I smiled at him. “Good, let’s get out of here, then.”
Alex agreed, so we started walking away to search for our next target. I took a swig from my canteen while we did so, emptying it to the last drop. I sighed and put it back in my chest pouch. Then I glanced back at the dead wolf, and more importantly, at the blood pooling around it.
I sighed again, then turned around and walked back to the corpse with a grimace. I made a cut near the neck and pressed my canteen to it. Blood slowly trickled into it and filled it up. I closed the cap and made my way back to Alex. He looked at me with confusion.
“What do you need that for?” he asked, so I explained while we searched for the next monster. He didn’t look too pleased by the idea of drinking my blood and almost refused, but he changed his mind when I pointed out that if I could drink his pee, he could drink my blood.
We found a spot to rest, and I took my canteen out again. I sniffed at the blood and it smelt like… blood. Not very surprising. I took a deep breath and took a small sip. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, though the taste still wasn’t great. It had a very metallic taste, with a hint of raw meat. It was much more palatable than the dire bear’s blood had been, though. So I took a bigger swig, and when I could keep that down, I drained the whole bottle.
“And, how’s the taste?” Alex asked.
I shrugged. “It’s manageable. At least this way we can stretch our survival a little longer. Though we probably shouldn’t do this for long. I doubt drinking blood would be particularly healthy for either of us.”
He shook his head. “Really, I’m almost glad I still have some of my recycled water left. Almost. At least we don’t have to worry about—why is your armband glowing?”
I glanced at my arm, and the armband was indeed glowing. And then it started vibrating. A quick look at the crystals confirmed that the armband thought my mana-pool had grown. So I reached out with my mind and found it to be true. My mana-pool was growing. Very slowly, but it was growing. And it kept growing.
Why now? Of all moments, why now? This was the third time it had grown; what did these moments have in common? Then it clicked, and I looked down at the canteen still in my talon. I remembered the bad taste of the dire bear’s blood pouring down my throat after I bit into its hide, after which I discovered my mana-pool had grown, and then the slightly metallic taste of the healing potion a few days ago, after which it had also grown, and now this.
It was blood. The answer to the growth was blood.