POV: Cass
It was a good thing I had my energy sense, otherwise I would never have known where that roar originated. I felt it moving further inside to the left down what I assume is some sort of branching path. This gave me the confidence to move as quickly as possible back outside. I had no desire, nor reason to fight this creature inside its preferred domain. It was a tight squeeze moving back through the tunnel at speed, but I made it out before it caught up to me. When it finally did catch up to me, the first thing I saw was its open maw as it bellowed once again, it was a circular affair best described as a meat grinder with teeth covering the entire way down. There were hundreds of them, all serrated and pointing back into its throat. If that thing gets ahold of me, I'm not coming back out again whole. I feel a slight shiver go down my spine at the thought.
What I saw next came as the creature closed its mouth and crawled out of the tunnel. It was a circular creature tapering to a point at its tail, covered in what looks like stone plates along its entire body. Instead of being some sort of worm like creature it had four legs that shouldn't have held its bulk up. After fully exiting the tunnel, it looked around and sniffed immediately turning to me. Thats when I noticed it didn't have any eyes. Instead, the most prominent feature on its face besides its mouth, was a pair of slits. It uses smell as its primary sense then? It was good to know, and it might give me an advantage in the fight.
Readying myself I considered its energy signature; this thing was even stronger than the alpha Reliag I fought the other day. Not wanting to give the monster the first move I dashed forward with every ounce of strength and agility I had. It was a bold move on my part, wanting to fight it in melee, but this was the only threat I could sense in the area, and I was disappointed fighting the alpha Reliag. It twitched its head as I moved, like it could sense something had changed, but it was only when I activated my energy blade that it reacted. It was surprisingly fast for something so bulky, which meant I only got a glancing blow as I tried to avoid its opening mouth.
Dismissing my blade and backing off, I watched as it sniffed the air and found me again. Squinting with suspicion at the creature, I tested something. I walked 3 feet to the left and summoned my blade again. It immediately snapped its head in my direction. So... you have an energy sense too do you? I mused. This was a first, though not surprising. I didn't think I was that special of a snowflake. That must be how it found this ore deposit, the same way I did. That made sense, it was good then that I used my blades as close to a strike as possible since my energy dissipated into the air extremely quickly these days. It had only gotten worse the darker my energy turned, the closer it shifted to the Void.
It was interesting that it seemed unable to sense the energy inside me and was only able to sense external energy. Keeping in mind that it could just be playing dumb, acting like it couldn't sense me just so it could trick me I advanced once again. I used my full speed to close the distance waiting until the last second to manifest my sword and slash down its side. At least that's what I thought I did, I started far enough back that even as its head snapped in my direction, I was already past it. However, my blade barely even left a groove through the stone plates on its side, let alone cut through.
Wow, that thing is extremely energy dense, at least its outer shell is. I thought as I backed up once more, this was the first time I had done such minimal damage to something. While I hadn't added any extra power to my sword, either my intelligence or wisdom stat was boosting the damage my energy did by a considerable margin. I wasn't sure how or which of the two it was, but I knew for a fact that my energy was doing more damage for less these days. At least this is getting interesting now. I thought as a smile crept onto my face.
After that second attack the monster had had enough and charged me as soon as it sniffed me out once more. It was relatively quick for how big it was and how skinny its legs were, but I was faster. What it was not very good at was turning, charging sure but as soon as I moved to the side it had to slow down and turn itself with a few steps. That was a huge weakness, and I immediately exploited it. Not wanting to dump half my energy into a massive alpha strike I took my time, only upping the energy in my blade by double and slashing at the same point multiple times to cut through. It took a few passes and I felt like a matador with a bull, but after the fourth consecutive strike on the same point I finally got through. It was gratifying as I heard the monster roar in outrage and fear.
I had targeted its back left leg as I wanted to keep my distance from the head, the only real worrying part of the creature. Without one of its four legs it was even slower and as I cut into its other back leg, it tried to run, leaning down to the ground and actually just eating through it.
"Oh, hell no you don't. Get your ass back here." I cursed at the cowardly monster who started the damn fight.
Not wanting the creature to get away I pooled energy for an alpha strike, after a few seconds I produced an energy blade 9 feet long and packed with 2/3rds of my remaining energy. As half of its body was into the ground I plunged my sword into it at an angle, aiming for its head. I'm not sure if I got it or just did enough damage to its internals, but it stopped trying to run away. I felt it then, a surge in my energy. Half a level! Shit I don't think I've ever jumped that far after a single kill. I had a massive grin on my face at that.
After giving it some thought I decided to drag the monster out of the area, I didn't want anything coming to eat the walking mouth and end up finding my new mine. The hole wasn't something I was going to waste my time filling; it can't be that odd to find a hole in the wilderness. After that I went back inside the mine and carved out a chunk of the ore, taking it with me. I had hopes that this would be a useful resource or at least something beneficial to someone that I could sell or trade the location of. Going back to my camp I considered the situation, with this ore and the stone the other monster sat around I was pretty confident that these resources were giving the monsters energy. Both creatures I fought that had them were far higher in level than any others. That brought the obvious question of if I could use it too, or if that was a beast only thing.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I mulled the question over as I ate more bbq Reliag, could I use natural resources to advance my class? After a full hour of poking, prodding, and meditating I was pretty sure the answer was a solid no. I had tried everything I could think of, I even tried biting parts of the ore or stone, and then I tried to lay on top of them in case body contact did it, then I tried it without a shirt on in case it needed skin contact. Nothing worked and I was extremely disappointed, I had hoped it would work and I would have another way to grow stronger, alas that wasn't the case. It was with a heavy heart I slipped into unconsciousness in a tree that night.
The next morning I made good time along the river, I estimated it was about 10:30 AM when the tree density I had become accustomed to slowly dissipated into a flat grass plain that extended for miles in every direction. Looking across the horizon I saw hills, trees, mountains, and even a ... a city in the distance. It wasn't a normal city, but a perfectly square section of a city the same as the zones I came from. It was such a huge relief to me, seeing that city. I dropped to my knees and took three deep breaths before I got control of myself again. I knew now that there was a good chance my family was still out there, I wasn't alone. I had never given up on them, but my hope soared in my chest.
It was another 30 seconds before I got up and crossed the river, striding quickly towards the city in the east. I was coming in to its west and south, and I could only see 4 of the zones besides the city. The top left zone being the northwest zone was what looked like a portion of the suburbs of a city. Below it at the middle left is a savannah area with tall grasses and a few short trees spotted around. The lower left zone is some kind of wetlands or marsh. and the only other zone besides the central city I could spot was a large plateau at the bottom middle zone. The plateau took up almost the entire zone, with only a portion next to the marsh being a steep slope instead of a perfect cutoff. It stood at what I estimated to be 4 stories tall.
After a few minutes of travel, I arrived at the corner of the marsh zone and set my travel rations aka the alpha Reliag corpse just outside of the zone, and hoped no monster or person would pick it up. I knew that if I placed it inside of the zone one of the monsters would eventually find it, and it seemed like none of the animals outside the zones really approached them. I had been keeping an eye out for any people, but I don't think I was spotted. I didn't want to be known as an outsider immediately, I wanted to figure out the state of the zones before I made any waves if I decided to at all.
With that I changed into the clothes I had saved for just this situation and entered the marsh. It wasn't 30 seconds before I came across monsters, I honestly wasn't sure if they were going to be the same kinds as the ones in my zones, but it turns out they were not. These monsters were a group of 16 and semi bug like but that's where the similarities ended. These things were thigh high six-legged bugs with large, raised back legs almost like a grasshopper, followed by a pair of legs in the middle that bent at a 90-degree angle from its thorax to the ground. Next came its front legs which didn't seem to be used to walk, but more like stabilizers or used in rough terrain, and likely for fighting ending in sharp chitinous points.
It had a head thorax and abdomen like most bugs, but its head was different, being connected by a neck and swiveling back and forth. The head itself was a long cylindrical shape ending in a set of mandibles and sharp teeth. The thorax was as average as they come, but the abdomen was a skinny drooping sack hanging between its two strong back legs. All in all, the creature was pretty disgusting but unimpressive. I could sense its energy signature and it was nothing but a bug to me at this point. Not really having had a chance to use my shield in a while I allowed the bugs to rush me only using my shield to kill them. The way I did this was only possible with weak and stupid creatures. Since my shield was made of energy, and heavily void tainted energy at that, as soon as the bugs attacked my shield anything that touched it dissolved so fast that they didn't lose any momentum. They couldn't stop themselves fast enough even if they wanted to, they simply dissolved themselves into my shield.
Truly it cost more to keep the shield active because of the siphon effect than the dissolution of the bugs. After I watched six of them kill themselves on my shield I got bored and just killed them all with energy daggers, moving on to something more interesting. My next stop was at the creatures grouping in 10's. This creature was a disgusting mess of melting flesh, I almost vomited at the stench alone. Maybe that was some sort of attack, but I didn't think so. It looked like a hyena in shape only, with a hunched back, four legs, and a short tail. That's where the similarities ended however, this monster was made of sticky melting flesh, and I could see bones in some places. It also had bone spikes coming out along its spine and its mouth had no lips, always showing its jagged teeth and leaking what I honestly hoped was saliva.
As I grew closer, I saw that they had four eyes all slightly covered by folds of sloughing flesh. I had a negative interest in going near those things and just slaughtered them with daggers before vacating the area and its stench. Next, I hunted down a trio of monsters, these were half snake half lizard creatures with two hands and a tail instead of legs. It both crawled and slithered, but they could also stand with their tail and use their hands to attack. They had clawed fingers and webbed hands extending into their arms which had another set of webbing attaching it to their bodies. The only other thing that stood out to me was the set of gills I could see on their necks. Apparently, they are a type of creature that can breathe in and out of the water, or who knows maybe that is just an aesthetic and it can't survive in water.
I took the time to move into melee combat with these creatures to figure them out, but after they showed their only skills to be standing on their tail and swinging their arms, I killed them and moved on. The fourth monster and the one that moved around as a single was something quite interesting. It was the size of a dog with four legs a tail 2 eyes and a snout, however its head was covered in an armored plate of chitin that resembled a triceratops or a horned beetle with a long horn at its nose and a horn above either eye. It also had chitin plates at all four of its shoulders and across its back and neck. Finally, its legs were barbed at every joint and ended in a two toed bovine hoof but with clawed points.
Unfortunately, it was nowhere close to my power and didn't provide a fight worth mentioning, unlike the walking mouth this thing couldn't take a single one of my lowest powered slashes, and simply fell apart into two pieces. It was good to know what I was dealing with and interesting that different zones had different monsters. Regardless it was time to move on to the city and surrounding population centers. I would need to scout the political situation or lack thereof before deciding what to do.