— Keira —
Less than an hour after leaving her camp, Keir found three giant vipers curled up together in a clearing by a fallen tree. The early fall night must have been fairly cold because the snakes reacted sluggishly as she stabbed her makeshift blade though the head of the closest viper.
As the next closest snake slowly reared back and struck, she activated “Blood Thorns”. A thorny vine of frozen blood wrapped around her blade as she met the snake's strike with her sword. Much faster than the literal striking snake, the vine burrowed into the wound her blade caused and into the snake's body.
As the vine grew out of and back into the snake she could feel the regenerative effects despite her lack of wounds. Since she didn’t need it she funneled the effect into “Serrated Strike” and carved through the head of the last serpent.
The serrated edge of blood along her blade was hindered by the flesh and bone of her enemy little more than the air. It also spread the damage somehow and there were five shallower cuts spreading off to either side.
With the battle over she was disappointed but not surprised that neither she nor her skills leveled up from killing three low tier two enemies.
Over the next three days and two nights Keir killed dozens more snakes. By the first morning of fighting, both her greaves had fallen off as the weakened leather snapped. After the first strap broke mid fight and almost tripped her she used a scrap of cloth to repair it. Unfortunately the new strap lasted about as long as the other old straps. With limited and fairly ineffective options using the contents of her pack she turned to the bodies of her foes. As much as she wished it wasn’t the case, she had neither the resources nor skills to turn the snake's hide into leather. She was however able to cut strips of their fresh skin and use that as makeshift straps.
Her gauntlets would likely have been on the verge of falling apart if she hadn’t removed them almost immediately. Even after searching her camp they were already showing signs of wear and tear.
After she finished checking her equipment for damage she checked her current stats.
Name: Keira
Race Abyssal Wight (Elf)
Class: Stygian Tide Carver
Level: 5 (+4)
Tier: 3
Affinity Steel (innate) Death, Tide, Dark (Undead Race)
Skills: Class Skills (Warrior’s Path Lvl 10, Tide Carver’s Stance Lvl 3 (+2), Blood Thorns Lvl 2 (+1) Serrated Strike Lvl 2 (+1) Blood Surge Lvl 1 (+1))
General Skills (Bushcraft Lvl 5 (+1), Inspection Lvl 6, Survival Lvl 3, Tactics Lvl 9, Temperature Resistance Lvl 1, Toxin Resistance Lvl 1, Weaponsmith Lvl 2)
Keir was fairly happy with her gains. Her level 5 class skill “Blood Surge” was an especially good acquisition. Her “Bush Craft” had also reached level 5 and had an upgrade pending after she tracked down and ambushed the last group of giant vipers.
“Blood Surge Lvl 1: Draw a small percentage of the bleeding from an open wound on your foe in the form of regeneration. Cooldown 10 seconds”
“Please choose “Bushcraft” Upgrade Path:
“Field Crafting: Provides guidance when crafting traps, shelters, and makeshift survival weapons.”
“Wilderness Knowledge: When used in place of or in conjunction with ‘Inspection’ provides additional information on wild flora and fauna.”
While having woken up with no weapons made “Field Crafting” seem like a better option than it would have before her death, she quickly dismissed the option. She didn’t really need skill based assistance with traps or shelters and the fact it specified survival weapons made it all but useless. By contrast “Wilderness Knowledge” had real potential. The path she’d taken her “Identification” down greatly increased the knowledge she could glean from items and equipment but gave only basic information on living, or undead, things. Her mind made up, she selected “Wilderness Knowledge” and finished repairing her armor.
Keir wanted to keep hunting but she knew she couldn't get much more from the weaker snakes. After killing well over a hundred of them they were becoming few and far between. As hesitant as she was to do so she decided to scout out the Ancient Viper Matriarch.
Her quest didn’t give many details, but from the way it read she suspected the ancient viper was likely in the ruins of the fallen village. She couldn’t help the spike of deep regret that the first she would see of the village she’d sought to save would be its ruins.
She hoped the cool night air would affect the largest snake in the same way it did its spawn. As a result she aimed to arrive in the village when the night was coldest.
While Keir walked, she thought about what her days of fighting revealed. Even with the large boosts to her stats she’d gotten from advancing to the next tier, her dexterity was barely improved, if at all. Her strength and constitution, on the other hand, were substantially improved. As for the rest, she could tell her reaction speed had also improved so her intelligence must have gone up at least a bit. It was a bit difficult to tell how much her Charisma or Wisdom changed while she was alone in the woods. The only way she was going to be able to get exact numbers was to either return to an adventurer’s guild branch or find someone with high level inspection skills geared towards helping others access their stats.
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Her idle musings came to an abrupt end as the fields and buildings of the village came into view. She found focusing on the fields was easier than examining the village proper. She allowed herself that small weakness.
All but the fields closest to the wall had fully reverted to wilderness with only wild variants of the crops once grown there and the crumbled farmhouses to show for the efforts of those who once dwelled there. The farms nearer to the village were overgrown but they were at least recognizable.
With nothing left to distract her she turned her attention to the village proper. The mighty serpent had apparently not felt like entering or exiting the town from a single point. Instead it must have just gone through the wall whenever it was in the serpent's path. Less than half of the wall's length was still standing. The buildings were in a bit better shape but Keir didn’t see a single undamaged structure. In the middle of the village she saw her foe draped on and around the remaining buildings.
Keir was not willing to go into her rematch as poorly prepared as the first fight, so she pulled off her pack. Quietly, she dug through the many viper fangs she’d stuffed in there in the space that once held the supplies she’d lost. Soon she had her potions out and stowed away in her armor. She had three least healing potions and one lesser.
She was glad she’d gone with alchemical healing potions instead of divine. Alchemical potions worked just as well on the undead as the living since they physically reconnected injured flesh and bone. They healed more but slower. Divine potions on the other hand started with a base of holy water and damaged undead as much as they healed the living. They also had lesser effects in return for acting almost instantly.
After taking longer than she would have been willing to admit, Keir steeled her resolve and approached the village she’d failed to save. When she reached the wall she began seeing signs that her foe was not as mighty as it had seemed from the tree line. It was clearly not well fed and its once mighty scales were slightly duller green with chips and cracks visible on many of them.
It was when she got close enough to see its head, she realized why. The cut along its heat receptive pits must have gotten infected before it healed, because they were almost entirely fused shut. That injury was on the same side as its ruined eye. Her sword was still embedded in the ruined mass of flesh that had been an eye.
Despite the fact the snake before her had ended her life Keir still felt a twinge of sympathy seeing the state of the wound. If there was anything left of the eyeball it was completely concealed behind layers of swollen infected flesh and caked on blood and puss. A wide swath around the eye was inflamed and seeping; the remaining scales rarely touched, let alone overlapped each other.
She distracted herself by examining the other injuries and saw the flesh of its bottom jaw was roughly torn almost entire in half. Most of the wound's edges were healed over but even disregarding the fresh tears the edges of the old wound were raw and painful looking.
With those injuries she was less surprised that it was much weaker and more surprised it had managed to acquire enough food to survive at all. Tapping into both Inspection and Bushcraft she Inspected the serpent.
“Ancient Viper Matriarch (Severely Weakened) Tier 4 Lvl??”
As Keir studied her old enemy she noticed its tongue flicked down between its split bottom jaws. It might not have realized she was there yet but it was clearly scenting the air. Before it could properly react to her presence she called on “Blood Thorns”. With the blood thorns coating her blade made of its own fang she carved into the nearest section of its tremendous length that lay on the ground. As the vines spread into the surrounding tissue it let out a wet angry hiss and focused its single remaining eye on Keir.
As it struck she channeled the intense burst of regeneration into “Serrated Strike” and fell back, holding up the blade as she did. Even with the preternatural sharpness of the blood coated blade it was almost ripped from her hand as it extended the split in the viper’s bottom jaw well into its neck.
As Keir rolled away from the blood pouring down from above her she realized that while she kept a hold of her blade, her right shoulder was dislocated. The pain was present but not quite as sharp as she would have expected. Mostly for the catharsis of it she inhaled so she could grunt with pain and annoyance as she popped the joint back into place.
She reached for a least healing potion before thinking better of it. Instead she activated “Blood Surge” on the snake's wounded jaw. As the surge of regeneration seeped into her damaged shoulder it felt like the joint was full of coarse sand. It was uncomfortable but the pain was gone and her range of motion was restored so she ignored the discomfort and leapt back into the fray.
While waiting for her cooldowns she relied on “Tide Carver’s Stance” instead of being forced to fall back entirely on “Warrior’s Path”. The fact that bracing herself carried or striking with her full force carried the effects of “Immovable Blade” and “Riptide Strike” respectively was a powerful advantage.
Rather than aim for single devastating attacks Keir instead focused on weakening and harassing her foe. When her foe reared back and paused rather than strike immediately Keir charged forward and struck. Soon the vipers ventral scales were being shredded by a mixture of her blows and the snakes movement through the damaged village.
As the viper grew increasingly enraged and reactive it landed more strikes on Keir. That same haste ensured most of those blows were glancing and often did more harm to the serpent than the source of its rage.
As Keir drained her last least healing potion she looked on with satisfaction as blood and other less identifiable fluids gushed from dozens of wounds on the snake's body and neck. Her foe was visibly weakened. If it had legs to stand on the snake would be staggering. It was also becoming clear that the blood flowing into its good eye was impairing its accuracy even more than its lack of depth perception alone.
After scanning the street around her she found a small pile of rubble she felt she could use for her next gambit. When it was available she spread “Blood Thorns'' across her armor for the first time and switched her viper fang sword to her other hand. She entrusted her entire defense to her new armor and the thorny vines crawling across her body as she sidestepped the bulk of the striking snake. The viper reeled back and Keir moved like she was about to charge before instead stepping up onto a relatively flat stone section of the rubble pile. As the viper took the bait and struck, she grabbed her old sword with her free hand and almost as an afterthought stabbed her fang blade into the swollen flesh on the side of the snake's face.
With a feeling like bursting a rotten pumpkin the force of the viper's strike drove first her two handed sword followed by her outstretched arm deep into the snake's head. Simultaneously she felt multiple ribs snap before the vines around burrowed into the snake's head and bound it in place. The force of the strike scattered the rubble she’d been standing on leaving her dangling from her right arm and her fang blade embedded in the viper's flesh.
After an interminable second the massive head fell limply to the ground and she heard a pair of notifications.
“You have Avenged your death at the fangs of Ancient Viper Matriarch”
“Quest ‘Avenge Still-Leaf Village.’ has been completed”
Mostly to distract herself from the process of retrieving her old sword from the putrid wound she focused first on the completed quest. She remembered the rewards had not been properly stated.
“Quest ‘Avenge Still-Leaf Village.’ completed. Rewards: The blade embedded in the Viper’s eye has been greatly enhanced, you have received the Title ‘Viper’s Bane’, Due to your undead nature and bloodline, possession of Still-Leaf Village has been awarded to you”
“Revive Still-Leaf Village (Yes/No)”
Before she could second guess herself she reached out mentally and selected “Yes”.