Quick note: I'll try to post tomorrow so we can get back to regular scheduled programming, but if not, expect the next chapter out on Saturday same time.
CHAPTER FIVE
Savage Delights
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A fel beast that’s tasted man’s blood was usually more savage than others. Even trained hunters only hunted such a creature in teams. Never alone.
“If Nike dies, then she dies,” Bram answered.
It was important for the monitoring team to witness an alpha player’s death to see how it affected a traveler’s soul when they returned to Earth. If there were side effects to dying on Aarde or if the traveler would be willing to play again after experiencing such a traumatic defeat, such things had to be known before the next phase of game development began.
However, now that a death could occur on his watch, Bram seemed loathed to let it happen.
“But maybe we should step in just in case… It’d be a waste to let her die now.”
“You’re too kind, My Prince.”
Having welcomed Nike to Aarde and chased her across the town and mountain for over an hour made Bram invested enough to want to keep her alive. Not just because he’d grown attached to the player, but because he didn’t want to be the first member of the monitoring team to experience a death. It seemed like a defeat.
“Ready a ‘Sleep’ spell in case we need to take over.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. It would be a waste if we had to step in now.”
Bram’s earlier mistake notwithstanding, they’d gone through such lengths to keep Nike from noticing them. Not only did they stay an appropriate distance behind her, but the mist Rowan had summoned to wrap around them like cloaks had made them near-imperceptible even to a former peacekeeper’s eyes.
“Try not to give our position away again.”
“I know, I know…”
Nike was smart enough not to charge into a dark cave alone. Instead, she banged an arm bone against the steel of her staff’s spear blade, creating enough noise to annoy whatever fel beast lay hidden inside the cave.
“It’s a different tactic to the one she’s employed throughout the hunt,” Bram noticed, though he didn’t think it was the wrong choice.
Nike’s decision took away an opportunity to snipe the fel beast from afar, but she seemed to decide, and wisely too, that waiting for it to come out on its own wasn’t a sound plan. Not here in the woods of Sundermount where monsters roamed freely, and night had finally fallen. Of course, if she’d known that Rowan was protecting her, Nike might have decided differently, but without knowledge of her secret protector, the player chose the best route of a quick encounter.
“She’s confident in her ability to fight even in close quarters,” Rowan guessed.
To which Bram added, “She’s been victorious so far. She has the right to feel confident…though that might just get her killed.”
It would be different if Nike knew even one spell, but relying only on the staff’s enchantment was risky. Without charging its power like she’d done earlier, the damage of her staff’s elemental magic might not be enough to penetrate through a larger beast’s hide.
Soon enough, they heard it…a roar so loud that birds in the nearby pines were forced to flee into the sky.
“That’s a lot louder than usual,” Bram whispered.
With Rowan adding, “This might be more dangerous than we assumed.”
A moment later, a red grizzly lumbered out of the cave, one much larger than the grizzly Bram had slain to summon Hajime. The shaggy beast with russet fur was nearly ten feet long and must have weighed more than eight hundred pounds. It certainly didn’t look like it was starving.
“Seriously,” Nike took an involuntary step back, “aren’t you way too big for a tutorial quest?”
It was a question on Bram’s mind as well for even he could feel this fel beast’s intimidating aura.
[Man-Eating Red Grizzly]
For Bram, the tag showed a yellow color, which meant it was a challenge he could deal with easily enough. For Nike, however, the fel beast’s tag was a distinct red. To face it now could mean her death.
As if in agreement with the Loom’s assessment, the red grizzly roared. Its bellow shook the ground, rippling across the woods like a peel of thunder.
“She can’t fight it alone,” Bram whispered.
He was about to get up and reveal himself, but Rowan’s hand pressed against his shoulder.
“Wait,” she insisted. “Our traveler isn’t as outmatched as you assume.”
It was only then that Bram noticed how Nike had stood her ground despite the red grizzly’s roar. Indeed, she’d done more than plant her feet on the dirt like an unyielding tree. Nike stretched her arms wide and let out a bellow of her own.
“Yaa~~ah!”
One of Bram’s eyebrows hitched upward.
Rowan giggled.
As for the red grizzly, it didn’t seem impressed by Nike’s wildness.
Nike sighed. “Loud noises are supposed to work on bears, but I guess you don’t scare easy.”
The red grizzly growled in response, forcing Nike to heft her staff in both hands.
“To become successful on Aarde, I need to survive any threat…”
Those were Bram’s words, and hearing Nike repeat them caused his heart to thump.
Light flared from her staff’s orb of sorcerite.
“I’m going to be a star.”
Nike’s grip tightened on her staff’s pole.
“Ready player one.”
Oh, how Bram longed to fight alongside her, to be brave like she was…but it wasn’t his turn, and so he watched with anticipation—his fingers curling over sweaty palms—as Nike faced her foe alone.
The red grizzly lumbered forward, but Nike slipped to the side before the fel beast could reach her.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Too slow!”
A quick step back and she created enough distance between them to fire a burst of water magic at the red grizzly’s left side. Too bad that the muscles underneath its shaggy fur were so thick that the magical blow barely bit into it.
There was enough pain to anger the red grizzly though, and with another mighty roar, the fel beast rose to its haunches and hurled a thick shaggy arm at Nike’s face. Claws the size of scullery knives rushed for her, but she dodged it expertly by sliding her head downward, bending her knees low enough to get underneath the grizzly’s swing, and then sliding back up to deliver a blow to its left side once again. This time, with a spear blade to its left shoulder.
Bram’s eyes widened with delight.
“That was a pugilist’s roll,” he whispered.
Warriors who fought with their fists were well-versed in dodging attacks made with weapons. The ‘Pugilist’s Roll’ was one such technique. The ‘Slip’ was another, and one Nike exhibited now by sliding to her right to avoid the red grizzly’s front quarters as it crashed back onto solid ground.
From there, she slipped further away, and after twirling her staff back into its upright position, launched another blast of water magic into the red grizzly’s side. The distance between them allowed her a double dose of shots, and where one failed, two successively fired at the same spot finally drew blood.
The red grizzly was not happy.
Nike was too quick though.
She dodged one blow, and a second, and then a third—interchanging between quick foot movements and tilting her body at the right timing to dodge the red grizzly’s successive blows. Each time she managed to avoid an attack, Nike launched a counterattack of her own, switching between the spear blade and water magic to deal accumulative damage to the fel beast’s left side.
Bram, who watched all this from the safety of his hiding spot, sat on the edge of his seat—and he couldn’t believe the skill in which Nike fought in close quarters.
“She’d shown such talent in casting and channeling magic that I thought she’d be more like Hajime,” he reasoned.
“But it turns out she’s more like Bridget, just as quick, and with more hop in her step,” Rowan weighed in.
Bram nodded.
It wasn’t uncommon in the Imperium for sorcerers to be good at close combat. Rowan and Ser Anthony were such individuals. Bram just didn’t think a traveler from another world could be as bold. Especially since Chris, Bridget, and Hajime had stuck to their roles when pushed into danger.
“This one may learn a new job before even our two friends can,” Rowan giggled.
It wasn’t such an impossible thing to imagine. After all, the Loom rewarded one’s effort just as much as one’s experience.
‘Wham!’
It was bound to happen.
In a duel between man and beast, one couldn’t possibly dodge all the attacks. Especially from a monster whose instincts were honed far more than a human’s. And so, the red grizzly’s claws finally caught Nike, though she managed to block the blow with her staff’s pole. Despite the successful block, however, the kinetic force of the red grizzly’s attack was strong enough to send Nike reeling back.
“Fuck,” she cursed.
Bram thought to rise and help her, but again, Rowan dissuaded him.
“Wait and watch.”
So he did—and his heart beat wildly as he watched Nike and the red grizzly exchange one savage blow after another.
The fel beast was much bigger, its swings heavier, but the player dodged most blows with the skill of a seasoned pugilist. What she couldn’t dodge, she blocked with her staff, and it was a wonder that its wooden shaft didn’t break under the red grizzly’s barrage.
“You’d think the Loom would list down her talents as a pugilist in her status,” Bram reasoned.
“It didn’t for you,” Rowan reminded him.
This was true.
As someone who’d been thoroughly trained in Lotharian wrestling techniques, Bram couldn’t help but be offended that the system refused to recognize his abilities. He’d learned why the morning after his fight against The Impure where a system message had revealed a glaring error in the system’s tools.
[CONGRATULATIONS! Through successive use of a sword-type weapon in many challenging battles, you’ve learned the ability [Basic Swordsmanship]! Increasing your proficiency will help to increase this ability’s level.]
[Proficiency: 11%]
Bram’s eyes had bugged out when he’d seen this.
A boy who’d practiced swordsmanship since he could walk and learned it from experts like Ser Anthony shouldn’t still be trapped in ‘Basic Swordsmanship’ as if he were an amateur.
When Bram had asked the Loom for an explanation, he’d learned that the system hadn’t just failed to reward him for his past achievements but had outright ignored them so that anything Bram had done before he started using the Loom was passed off as inexperience. This didn’t mean he didn’t have the skills. They just weren’t properly recognized, meaning the boons he might have received from having mastery over a style of fighting—like higher damage increases or resistances—weren’t given to him. More importantly, having only ‘Basic Swordsmanship’ in his status prevented Bram from learning higher techniques like the Sword of Life’s Third Breath. At least not with the Loom’s help.
Of course, it didn’t mean the Loom wouldn’t recognize his talents. Repeated use of his wrestling techniques might eventually earn him basic mastery. He just loathed the fact that his efforts hadn’t been recognized beforehand, which, frankly, wasn’t that surprising. The Loom had ignored him for most of his life after all.
Bram assumed a similar injustice had been done to Nike so that her pugilist training had been ignored by the imperfect system, and she’d have to prove her skill from the ground up.
“It does recognize her talents as a peacekeeper. I assume it’s more of a consolidation of all her training much like Status Emulation draws out all your hidden talents,” Rowan suggested.
Bram wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. Rowan’s reasoning made a kind of sense. More importantly, he was suddenly distracted by the events unfolding before him.
Nike pursued the essence of ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ for she kept up the fast pace of combat she’d possessed since the beginning. Because of this, the damage she dealt against the red grizzly’s side accumulated, particularly in the shoulder of its left front paw.
As blood gushed out of the garish wound, Bram realized something.
“She’s hitting the same spot repeatedly…” He grinned. “Even a single axe can fell a mighty tree through repetition.”
It was one of Ser Anthony’s teachings, which Nike seemed to have heard somewhere else for she was doing the very thing that a tiny man might use to topple a giant.
This might be easier said than done because Nike must be expending a lot of stamina moving around so much. One could see it in the way sweat coated her arms or her quickened breath.
Fortunately, Nike’s strategy bore fruit before her fatigue turned critical. Repeated attacks weakened the muscles of the red grizzly’s left shoulder, dulling its movements enough to lessen its threat against an enemy that moved to quickly to be caught.
Noticing her new advantage, Nike dove right in, avoiding the red grizzly’s haymaker as it came swinging for her neck—and Bram’s heart dove in with her.
“Is it always this hard?”
Sweat dripped down his brow.
“Watching someone else’s fight but not intervening?”
Bram felt Rowan’s hand wrap around his, their fingers intertwining.
“Now you know how I feel whenever you recklessly jump into the fray.”
“Sorry.”
Rowan shook her head.
“I believed in you…and you’ve lived up to my expectations.”
“I try.”
“It’s your turn now to believe in someone else.”
Both their gazes fixed on Nike’s back. Broad as it was, it still seemed insignificant compared to the task they hoped she and her fellow players could carry.
“Trust in your plan…and in these travelers you’ve bet your life on.”
Rowan meant that literally too.
With the Winter Solstice deadline nearing, Bram’s life might end if the great undertaking failed. His fate was tied to his players like Nike, which suddenly seemed at risk.
With all her running around, it was inevitable that Nike’s stamina would become depleted. It came at the worst time though, because she stumbled just as the red grizzly launched another attack at her. With ragged breath, she managed to tilt her shoulder away from the maw that came biting at it but failed to see the arms stretching toward her.
“Fuck!”
She was caught in the red grizzly’s bear hug.
“Shit!”
Its claws raked against her back, causing rivulets of blood to pour down her spine.
This time, Rowan didn’t stop Bram as he rose to his feet.
“Phoebus’ cock,” he cursed.
Bram drew Dusk’s hilt from its holster—but he didn’t awaken its violet-range blade. He couldn’t. He was too stunned by what he’d just witnessed to even think of going to Nike’s rescue.
Somehow, Nike managed not to lose her consciousness despite the red grizzly’s thick arms trying to crush her. Indeed, she’d managed to grit her teeth, and in a move so reminiscent of Bram that he couldn’t help but be in awe of her, Nike sent her head crashing into the red grizzly’s nose, causing the fel beast to stagger back.
Even more surprising, the red grizzly’s hold on Nike wavered, and she managed to slip away from it before it could regain its footing.
As its front paws landed back on the ground, the red grizzly’s shoulder finally gave, and the beast stumbled, almost crashing awkwardly onto the dirt.
It was then that Bram realized that Nike’s attempts to weaken its arm had also saved her life. For with the strength of its left arm diminished, the red grizzly’s bear hug didn’t become the death blow it normally would have.
As for the battered Nike, she didn’t miss her opportunity.
“See.”
Rowan was also standing now.
“Those you choose to believe in may just live up to our expectations.”
As Rowan’s narration ended, Nike limped forward determinedly. And, just as the red grizzly lumbered back to its feet, she shoved her staff right into its open maw.
Instead of anger, the fel beast looked suddenly confused, and that would prove a fatal mistake.
Then, in a voice that was loud and confident, Nike roared, “Unshakable Justice!”
Brilliant blue light flared from the red grizzly’s mouth. A second later, the sound of a hunting horn’s cry resounded across the forest, and then the monster’s head exploded…