As the darkness enveloped her, Guin pulled out a torch and set it ablaze. The fire lit the way and chased off the chilly cavern air. The light bounced off the dark rocky walls of the cave, bringing them to life. The last thing she needed right now was the spirit that haunted her to appear right now.
Remembering her character sheet, she paused to look at her status and saw that her [Fear of the Depths] had already kicked in. Lucky for her, the -5% on all stats was basically meaningless in the tutorial—though she wondered how often it would affect her in the main game. Now that she was thinking about it, caverns were some of her favorite places in RPGs. Too late now, she supposed, stepping deeper into the cavern. She wasn’t really afraid of caves; she was afraid of being submerged in water. That they put the two together into one trait seemed rather silly to her.
Echoing sounds and flickering light appeared as she turned down the neck of the tunnel. Guin blew out her torch and stuck it back in her inventory. She re-cast [Spirit Armor] to make sure it didn’t expire any time soon and turned into a fox to take advantage of the stealth bonus.
Sneaking around the bend, she saw what appeared to be the camp of some kind of bipedal creatures; goblins, most like. They were short with squashed faces with long noses, and ears that were wide like a bat’s. They were chittering back and forth in some language Guin didn’t know—and the fact that it wasn’t translated meant that it might not have even been real.
There were three of them in a little rounded alcove, all gathered around a sad excuse of a fire. Two big ones with clubs swung over their shoulders seemed to be pacing back and forth in front of the passageways leading in and out. There was another smaller one with a bow and a small quiver filled with arrows.
Guin assessed the situation carefully. She had never taken on more than one enemy before—and she had never fought with these guys. It was easy to imagine that they were slower than the beast types, though, especially the bigger ones. If she acted fast enough, she could at least use her [Backstab] ability to take down one of the big guys, assuming their health wasn’t astronomical.
If she did it that way, right as the big one went by, she wouldn’t need to use [Fox Form] to catch him. She morphed back and continued to watch, looking out for other pathers that might come by. If she could kill that one first, she could enter fox form to quickly maul the archer, quickly getting rid of the group's apparent main DPS. After that, she probably wouldn’t have a problem fighting toe-to-toe with the final one. Dying wasn’t a problem here, but she had already discovered that becoming overwhelmed could become a real issue.
Leaning as flat against the wall as she could, she drew her dagger, waiting for the big one to pace past, and as he did, Guin jumped on him, stabbing the dagger into the back of the monster’s shoulder with a [Backstab]. Failing to hit where she wanted to, she cursed.
The creature cried out a warning and grabbed at her with its bulky arm. The archer had started shooting at her while the second big one tromped towards them. Trying to compensate for her failure, she dragged the dagger out so that it would cause significant bleeding. As it went to smash its back against the wall to get at her, she gripped the dagger tight and stabbed at it again.
This time, she was successful, hitting a crit and killing it with a painful cry.
Continuing to use the felled one as a shield, Guin cast [Fox Form] before lunging at the archer’s throat the minute her paws touched the ground. The brainless AI struggled as she tore at his throat with her teeth. As the second big one swung his club towards her, she jumped and leaped off the wall. Shifting back into human form, she backstabbed the archer, ending his pitiful life even though she missed his neck and the dagger had just pierced his shoulder. Not letting the miss perturb her this time, she stood and faced the last of them, who looked like he was attacking her in slow motion.
Feeling like it was better for her to run at him than try to withstand the attack, as soon as his club missed her head, she lunged at him, then fox-formed and pulled back to dart around him. She attempted to trip him but had little to no success. He may have faltered a little, but not enough.
Guin bit at his legs, trying to whittle away his HP. It was easy to dodge his swinging club. Dulled pain or not, she didn’t want to get hit by that thing. She dodged a few more times, then fox-shifted as the cooldown hit, using the extra speed boost and the monster’s confusion to run up his back and human form, straddling his head between her legs and trust the dagger into the base of its neck.
The beast wailed loudly and grabbed her by the leg, pulling her off him. It threw her, smashing her body into the cave wall with quite a bit of force—It hurt! The monster roared at her, and she slammed her hands against her ears. Dazed, it took her a moment to remember that she was in battle. By the time she looked up, it was already charging at her. Scrambling up, she tried to get out of its path.
It ran head-first into the rock wall that she had just peeled herself off of. Thoughts of how stupid the AI was sped through her head, and she took advantage of the situation, grabbing her dagger and rushing at its exposed back. It only took her two more stabs to kill the thing.
It stopped moving.
Guin fell to the ground, huffing to catch her breath. She sat down next to the fire and pulled out some bread and water as the corpses around her popped into treasure chests. After finishing her meal, she went through the treasure chests left by the creatures. Each had two tokens and about the same average coin drop as the Beedants and Moarbits. Though slightly disappointed, she went back to the fire.
Of course, the spirit which haunted her seemed to think that this moment, as she contemplated her kills, was the best time to talk to her. “Artfully done,” it said. “Though that last one was a bit of a struggle. Should I have helped?”
Guin froze over. “Who are you?” she asked.
“I?” went the voice in her left ear. Something brushed her face as the voice came to her right ear, “I am truth. I am life. I am... All that which is and isn’t. Here you find me, there you find me. You find me in babies. You find me in the old. You find me in the fire. You find me in the dark. I am immortal, but I am not alive; not really.”
“I highly doubt a god would choose to follow me around,” she said, irritated.
The voice laughed. “I’ll make a deal with you, mortal. If you can guess the answer to my riddle before you finish the last of the Harbinger’s quests, then I shall tell you who I am—and perhaps, I might even bring you to Wise myself—after all, their riddle is mine own.”
Guin blinked. It couldn’t have been that easy, could it? She thought about the riddle, and she thought about the fools themselves. Could the answer be the one she had been looking for since she met them? How stupid...
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“How many chances do I get?” she asked.
“You only get one life,” it said. It was easy to imagine the voice grinning like the Chesire Cat.
“Do I get any other hints?”
“We shall see how I feel as time goes by,” it told her. “For now, take this, and kill these creatures. They offend me.”
<
The spirit which haunts you has given you a riddle: “I am truth. I am like. I am... All that which is and isn’t. Here you find me, there you find me. You find me in babies. You find me in the old. You find me in the fire. You find me in the dark. I am immortal, but I am not alive; not really.” This quest is optional. It can be skipped.>> < In addition to the quest, a light shone over her, and she felt stronger. She had gained a buff called [Battle Ready] with a 30-minute timer. Out of her curiosity, she checked her notification window. <<[🌀Notifications](❗)]>> ⚔< ⚔< ⚔< 🎯< ௹< ৳< ௹< ৳< ௹< ৳< 👻< < < “Hmm,” she pondered aloud. Gobos. Definitely a cousin of the goblin. Guin sighed as she wondered how much XP she would be getting if she could gain experience points for this. The experience itself, however, was worth its weight in gold. Continuing through the cave, she killed off another group of Gobos. Half an hour and roughly fifteen Gobos later, she came to something different. Rounding the corner in fox form, she saw a large Gobo, dressed in a robe of ragged patchwork silks of various colors. It held a wooden staff with a sparkling orange gem focus. Alone in the room with seemingly no way out, surrounded by what looked to be treasures of gold, silver, and precious stones, Guin could only assume that this was the boss. She figured it was also safe to assume it was a caster-type creature. While her experience with combat was pretty average so far, dealing with a caster would be different. Magic in any game was a wildcard of mechanics, and having no experience or magic of her own made it difficult to predict how the caster would act. She had also lost her haunting buff. Hoping it wouldn’t be that different from the archers, Guin decided to go with the ‘go for the throat, then the back’ tactic she had previously relied upon and pray for the best. But, as soon as her paw entered the room, the torches flickered. The gobo flipped around to face her, bright blue eyes settling on her. It looked confused; it didn’t seem sure if Guin was an enemy or not, but she wasn’t going to wait for it to decide. Its throat wasn’t exposed as the others had been, so she changed her tactics, using the walls to catapult herself to its shoulder. The gobo still looked confused as Guin morphed into human form and planted her dagger into the area of its spine. The creature jerked with a screech, spinning around and raising its staff up. Guin didn’t want to give it time to think beyond that, though, and held on as well as she could as it spun around, performing [Backstab] after [Backstab] as long as her stamina held out. The gobo shrieked and began to chant. Gritting her teeth, Guin kept her attacks up. While it was chanting, it seemed as if it couldn’t move, which allowed her to get several more, accurately aimed [Backstabs] in—but she didn’t seem to do much damage. All she was doing was drenching herself in the spraying blood. The creature suddenly stopped speaking and lifted its staff. The orange gem spun in the air, and the air seemed to gather around it. Guin felt the blood drain from her face as she watched the gem and furiously began hacking at the creature until she couldn’t breathe anymore. Distracted and winded by the stamina drain, she watched as the wind around the staff’s focus formed a fast-moving ball of wind. She could feel it sucking the oxygen out of the area, and the pressure it emitted made her dizzy. Guin fell off the gobo and staggered back. The creature gave her a mad grin and said one last word. With that unintelligible utterance, the air released, and Guin was sent flying back into the cave wall with even more force than when the Gobo Club Thug had whacked her. The rock wall crumbled around her even as its shards stabbed into her back. Even though she was convinced no air could escape her lungs, she cried out; it was a tiny, pitiful cry. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she collapsed like a rag doll. A sharp, delighted laugh came from the center of the room where the caster was, and he began to chant again. No, Guin told herself. That wasn’t happening again—fuck that. She pulled herself out from the hole in the wall with all the strength she could muster. It would have been helpful if she could see health bars, but they wouldn’t appear until you achieve a combat rank of ‘C’ or greater for any given monster. Biting her lip, she took a moment to consider what she could do to stop the thing from casting. Would [Trip] serve as an interrupt? Rushing up to it, she swiped at the monster’s legs. It was a success! Her action sent the gobo up head over heels with a screech and a loud thunk! It babbled in whatever language it spoke as it struggled in its silks. Guin took the chance to grab it by the ears, exposing its soft throat. Doing her best to ignore the look in its gleaming eyes, she swiped the blade across its throat. The creature gave out a blood-curdling sound from deep in its throat as it struggled and shook—and eventually, died. As it did so, all the treasures she had seen in the room melted away into rocks, dirt, and a few wooden boxes. Unable to stand, Guin pulled herself away from the body and leaned against the wall, catching her breath. Covered in blood, she started to sob in a mix of pain and relief. Even though she knew she couldn’t die, she had been afraid. Even though she knew it to be a monster, some part of her was moved by the eyes of the creature. She really needed to get rid of this dagger. Close combat was just not for her. At least not that close.