The vibrations got more extreme, to the point that I’d call them tremors. Oy oy oy, wasn’t this extremely bad news? A tier-four monster was coming up here? Was it somehow tunneling through the ground? What the hell did it even want up here?
I considered what I was supposed to do when the ground under me exploded and I was hoisted into the air. I briefly caught sight of something huge and white emerging from where I was just standing before plopping back down.
Directly onto the creature’s head.
Was that really how I’d end my newfound life in this world? Because some strong dickhead felt the need to come up here and curb stomp some newbies? And why in the ever-living fuck, did it have to come up directly under me?
For now, I held on for dear life, hoping that the humongous creature wouldn’t notice a tiny slug sitting on its head. I was small enough to barely count as an itch, or at least I hoped so.
The thing was already moving on as soon as it exploded from the ground, lifting its head up into the air. I noticed that we went up quite a distance and moved my eyes to better understand what was happening. What I saw was an incredibly long, rope-like body.
Was this thing some sort of snake? No, that couldn’t be. If I looked towards the sides, I could clearly see several limbs that were attached to the base of the head. And all of them culminated in some blade-like digits. Shit, this thing could rip me apart with nary a thought! Well, most things could, to be honest, but this thing could do so without even trying.
The head swiveled around a bit until it locked on to something and lowered back down. I was then taken for an impromptu bus ride to who-knows-where. I made every effort to hang on as the thing snaked its body forward, trying to maintain a low presence. Please, oh please don’t notice me up here.
Turns out that we didn’t go very far, as the creature arrived at the pool of water I frequented, much to the surprise of the monsters present. Apparently, tier-four monsters weren’t included in the peace treaty that was in effect around the water source, and attacks started to rain down on the newcomer.
I immediately activated both of my defensive skills, lest I be hit by a stray skill. But then again, all of the skills were absorbed by the snake-thing, mostly without effect, I think. I’d like to believe that I saw some blood flowing, but to be honest, I think those wounds barely counted as scratches for this leviathan.
It seemed to take in the situation for a few seconds before it started moving again. And it was a bloodbath. The blade limbs tore through the present monsters, and there was nothing they could do except hand their XP over willingly. It barely took five seconds before almost thirty monsters lay dead around the pool.
If I could still sweat, I’d fill up some buckets right quick about now. How the hell would I get out of this one? I frantically waved my eyes around, looking for a way to escape while the monster popped its kills into its mouth like popcorn. I didn’t spot a convenient way for me to disengage, but what I did see was that this dude was missing some hefty chunks of flesh himself.
Did… did this thing escape from something even stronger? Did it just come up here to recuperate? I shuddered at the thought of the monster that could manhandle a tier-four monster like this and renewed my vow to take every opportunity to get stronger. I’d need it where I was gonna go.
And then, I carefully reoriented my eyes back forward. The weird snake was still munching on its victims, totally unaware of my presence. I watched the process with morbid curiosity, as a totally insane plan started to take form in my head.
This thing didn’t know that I was hitching a ride. It was already hurt by something strong, so its HP had to be somewhat low, right? Wasn’t this just like the other times? What would happen if I poisoned this guy right now? Would my poison even work on a monster like this? There’s no way that one portion of poison would cost it more than five HP, right? But what if I just kept on poisoning it?
I was still debating with myself when the not-snake finished up its meal and lowered its head towards the water in front of it. And all caution was thrown to the wind as I conjured up a poison shot. There was a good chance I’d be crushed to death by its body if I tried to dismount with my slow speed. And if I tried crawling forward, it might notice me and just spear straight through my body. No, weird as it sounded… the safest place for me to be was right here, on top of its head.
So I started shooting my poison into the water. Right now, eight shots was my limit, and I unloaded everything I had into the drink. All I could hope for was that my poison could outpace its passive regeneration, even by a tiny bit. If not, I was well and truly screwed.
The facehugger rip-off continued to drink until the entire pool was emptied. Hopefully, my poison was strong enough to not get diluted too much and still do some damage.
With the pool empty, the giant was apparently still hungry and raised its head up in the air again, presumably to look for its next victims. It quickly settled on a direction and started slithering its way over. Thankfully still entirely unaware of my presence.
It didn’t take long until we encountered more monsters, which were quickly dispatched by the much higher-tiered monster. I couldn’t do anything for the first few kills, since my MP was still regenerating, but eventually, I recovered enough for another poison shot.
Now, my aim was still horrible. As long as I was close, or the target was huge, I didn’t have any problems hitting stuff, but this situation was different. I needed to hit a monster in the brief window between the moment it was killed, and the instant it disappeared into the maw waiting to eat it. To maximize my chances, I had to wait for the very last moment, since that would be when it was relatively close to me.
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Praying, I sent a hail mary towards the newest kill and to my surprise, I actually managed to hit it! Success! Content with my contribution, I refocused on staying as still as I could on the not snakes head as it continued dispatching monsters around the cave. This was actually the first time I got to move around that much, and I realized just how huge this cave was.
This entire time, we’d been going pretty much straight away from the wall, and even this big monster was unable to reach the other side in this time.
I was just beginning to enjoy my time riding around since it was so refreshing to go fast for once when my vehicle suddenly stopped. A shudder went through the monster, almost shaking me off my perch, followed by a few jerky moves of the head. I didn’t have to wonder about what was going on, since not soon after, an amazing amount of puke left the snake’s mouth.
Ohoho, what’s this? My poison seems to be working after all. I immensely enjoyed this small victory over the tier-four below me. So much so that I was briefly worried about it sensing my out-of-control smugness, but thankfully it didn’t. The only thing it did do, was retch a couple of times more before going back on the hunt.
Obviously, my poison wasn’t anywhere close to finishing this behemoth off, but hey, I achieved proof of concept! If I could cause it to constantly puke up its food as well, maybe it’d just starve to death after a while. I wonder if I’d still get credit for the kill in that case? Even if I didn’t, the emergency quest said that the rewards were based on my actions, so this was sure to give me some neat stuff at the very least, right?
So it was with renewed vigor that I clung onto my worst enemy yet, intent on eventually being the cause of its death.
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It was several hours, and several successful poisonings later, when the snake monster finally slowed down a bit. I had of course missed more poison shots than I’d hit, but I was still putting in the works. The snake emptied its stomach several more times, and I was certain that it wasn’t getting much nutrition, if any at all, into its body.
Slowly but surely, the not-snake coiled around itself, creating a veritable mountain of a monster. It’d seem like it was time for it to catch some shut-eye. It was a long day for the creature after all.
Not only did it get hurt badly in one of the lower layers, but when it came up here to hunt some easy prey, all it got was an upset stomach. At this point, hundreds of tier-one monsters had been killed, yet none of them remained in its stomach for a long time. So it was not surprising that the poor thing was tired.
I waited until I was one-hundred percent sure that it was sleeping, before carefully dismounting its head. I had become a bit cocky over the last few hours, and there was no way I’d let a chance like this slip me by.
Slowly, very slowly, I made my way down to where its mouth was located. The mouth was huge, definitely even scarier up close, but I came here with a purpose. I could see a few small gaps where the mouth wasn’t properly closed and made my way over until I was directly next to one of them.
My MP had recovered enough for me to use poison shot three times, so that’s exactly what I did. Three salvos were fired in short succession directly into the mouth before I carefully made my way back up to my regular spot.
Thankfully, it didn’t wake up while I was doing this, which suited me just fine. My poison could do its work now, even during the monster’s sacred sleeping time. If I really wanted a shot at taking this guy down, I needed to reach an almost constant upkeep of poison. Even if I only did a single HP more damage than what it recovered, at some point it’d die.
Dreaming of the possible rewards I’d get for killing something like this, I started to feel tired myself.
Huh. Turns out slugs do need sleep, after all.
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I wasn’t sure how much time I’d spent riding this dumb snake around. But it felt like it was several days, at least. I was still firmly attached to the snake’s forehead as it continued hunting in the first layer. We changed caves a few times, via the tunnels that connected them, whenever the population of a specific cave got too low.
I made sure to poison it whenever I could, and effectively made this thing’s life hell. No matter where it went, the poison followed. No matter how much it killed and consumed, it was all puked up at a later point. Even when it slept, it woke up later, not feeling rested at all.
I used the time whenever the creature slept, to eat something myself by taking my kills out of the inventory, a short distance away from the not-snake. Of course, I made sure to lob as much poison into its mouth as well, whenever it decided to have a nap.
At this point, it had become a boring routine for me. Ride around, poison shot. Wait for MP to recover, poison shot. Wait until it slept, poison shot. Sleep a bit myself, and then repeat the process again and again.
My only ray of hope was that the wounds it received from its mortal fight weren’t healing up at all, which meant I was at least keeping it from restoring its HP passively. Which meant that I was probably doing some small amount of damage as well.
I’d already spent so long on this stupid plan of mine, and there was no way I’d stop now! No! I would see this through to the end, no matter what!
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It was “night” currently. I’d taken to calling the times where the big one slept night, for convenience sake.
Tiredly, I took out what remained of the elephant from my inventory and started filling my stomach. I had consumed about half of it at this point, which was a lot, considering just how much bigger this thing was than myself. Combined with the smaller hyena corpses that were completely gone by now, I’d earned myself a fancy twenty-three more data points.
I chowed down on the elephant while thinking about my current progress. The not-snake had slept ten times by now, and it was still kicking. Which meant I was already doing this for ten days. How I hadn’t turned insane from this incredibly boring, yet dangerous task, I just didn’t know. It was like I was gripped by an otherworldly determination and somehow managed to keep going.
I was so bored, that I almost missed the system window popping up in front of me, only realizing what it was after a few seconds of staring at it. Huh?
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Emergency Quest has been cleared, Congratulations!
Calculating rewards...
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Wait, what? I frantically looked over to where the snake was sleeping. There was no way it left without me noticing, right? My fear proved to be unfounded as the white mountain was still present. But then, why did I clear the quest? I was immensely puzzled by this new development.
And then the rewards started pouring in.