We hunt monsters 14, p.70
We Hunt Monsters 14, page 70
“Did you get what I asked for?”
Falcon sighed, then produced a slab of craggy leather.
“It cost a pretty gold,” the man said as Keith took it. “I had to pay quite a bit more than the System value to get someone to willingly give up their piece.”
“How much?” Keith asked.
“Five small gold bricks,” Falcon replied.
It was a ludicrous sum of gold for a chunk of monster hide, but Keith had asked for it. Besides, given all the money Number 4 had heaped on him, it was a drop in the bucket. Keith handed over the gold without any regret.
“I also managed to get some of the metal you requested,” Falcon continued, removing five square blocks of each.
They were clearly unrefined, but that didn’t matter. Farah could likely do something like that in her sleep. Though given the Quality of the metal, perhaps not.
“This is a part of your share, so the excavators were more than happy to let it go before the payouts started. As for the shell fortress, I was informed that they’re currently working on the transportation item. It’s been a slow and costly process, but apparently, they should be done in about a week. This is just for the hollowed-out shell. There will be nothing inside.”
“That’s fine by me,” Keith said. “Thanks for the update. I’ll be seeing you around.”
He stepped through another gate and popped right back into Farah’s forge.
“One of these days, I’m going to stab you,” Farah said as he tossed over the hide and withdrew a couple of Elixirs as well.
“You can stab me now if you want,” Keith offered.
She narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, as though suspecting some form of foul play. Then she shrugged, drew a dagger, and stabbed him right in the gut. The dagger stopped dead on his skin, and Farah snorted as she drew the dagger back, showing that the tip had bent a bit.
“Knew it was too good to be true,” she muttered, tossing the dagger onto a pile of scrap metal.
“Well, maybe this will make it up to you,” Keith said, piling the blocks of Striated Mithril and White-Star Orichalcum on the anvil next to him.”
“If you let me keep the scrap, it will,” Farah said, her eyes lighting up.
“So long as the scrap doesn’t somehow end up being half of the metal,” Keith said. “Don’t go skimping on me. I’ll know.”
“Like I’d ever compromise my own work,” Farah huffed. “I’ll keep you posted on how things go on my end. I might not succeed in creating a new alloy, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try my best. Besides, it’s not every day a smith gets to create a World Item, and I can bet I’ll be getting all kinds of rewards for completing a project like this.”
“I’ll be waiting to hear from you,” Keith said, then he stepped through another gate, this time reappearing in Monstros.
He’d fixed the point at the central location of the ring of volcanoes, where the entrance to a subterranean space was located. He wasn’t sure why he’d picked this spot, but it had popped into his mind when thinking of a good spot. He didn’t want to return to the expedition yet – not with the tests he was about to do – and the glow of the volcanoes might hide some of the light from his armor.
The sky overhead roiled with clouds, while lightning flickered across the sky. He could see monsters roaming around the exterior of the volcanoes, but he ignored them for the time being. At this point, none of them was a real threat to him in this part of the continent.
His armor appeared on his body, along with all of his other M-tagged items. He felt stronger almost immediately, his armor rising along with his stats thanks to the equipped items. He flexed his fingers, testing his movement. His Agility was still his highest stat, and not by a little bit either. Still, he didn’t feel too unbalanced.
“You’re really going to do this?” Bob asked as Keith tapped into his breastplate and activated it.
A dull ache radiated through his body as he was flooded with power. He didn’t activate Kinetic Retaliation – he wasn’t fighting anyone so there was no point – but the armor’s power still coursed through him, boosting his Endurance and adding a million points to his Stamina. Now the question was which piece to activate alongside it to give himself the best shot at being able to endure the pain.
“I’d say to go for the gauntlets or kilt,” Tac said. “The boost to Strength might help you tough it out a bit better and the Vitality jump couldn’t hurt.”
Keith had already activated the breastplate alongside the kilt and knew it wouldn’t do anything to dull the pain, so he decided to go with the first option. The gauntlets activated with a dull thrum of power, metal sliding up over his arms as the pain intensified, growing until it hit a plateau.
“There! That’s not so bad, is it?”
Keith was down on his hands and knees, his teeth clenched and eyes closed tightly. It felt like his blood was on fire and his bones wanted to crack. Like his organs wanted to swell and burst. He could taste blood, and when he opened his eyes, he could see droplets falling to the ground. He spat and was momentarily confused when he didn’t see any red until he realized it wasn’t coming from his mouth.
The back of his left gauntlet brushed over his nose, and sure enough, it came back smeared in crimson. He remained in the same position, feeling the pain radiate through him for nearly a minute until he became used to the sensation, though the pain didn’t lessen. He still felt like his body was going to tear itself apart.
Looking up, he grinned as he saw monsters moving to his location. With two active pieces, Echo of Conflict was activated, pulling all attention in a fifty-mile radius. Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet as the pack of Monstros rippers came around the side of one of the volcanoes. They were slavering beasts with oversized teeth and claws larger than most daggers. They were large, covered in rippling muscle, and obviously hungry.
“Alright,” Keith said, raising his hands and his feet sliding out into a classic fighting stance.
Blood dripped steadily from his nose, and his body ached with pain. Tremors ran through him as he fought to remain steady.
“Let’s see what you’ve got.”
104
Keith sat with his back against the base of a volcano. His body was caked in blood. Some of it was his own, though most of it belonged to the various monsters he’d killed. He’d been fighting for hours, and this was the first break he’d gotten since he’d started. Both pieces of armor were still active, and he could see more monsters being pulled in as they walked into the radius of the armor’s effects.
Several of his bones were broken, mainly in his arms and chest. His legs ached terribly, as did his head. The bleeding had stopped from his nose, though trails of crimson traveled down from his ears, disappearing beneath the lip of the armor. He winced as he shifted and saw the piles of corpses lying around. He hadn’t had the time to loot any of them yet and was sure that if his armor didn’t draw the monsters in, the corpses most certainly would.
Up until now, he’d only been facing regular monsters, with the occasional Field Boss or Boss Monster. He was far more nervous about pulling in a Raid or Section Boss, but so far, it seemed he’d been lucky.
“You should probably heal yourself now,” Tac said. “Any more of this and you start running the risk of dying.”
Fighting through pain was something with which he was intimately familiar. Part of his challenge while wearing the two active pieces had been a self-imposed ban on all healing skills and items, which was a bit stupid. He didn’t need to feel even more pain than he already was, but in his mind, he was tempering his body, mentally preparing himself to be able to have a third piece active as well. He didn’t think that would be happening today, as two was hard enough, but maybe soon, once he got used to the sensations and his body adapted.
Groaning, Keith pushed himself upright and used Total Recovery before deactivating the breastplate. A sensation of pure bliss washed over him as the intense pain he’d been feeling for the last few hours disappeared. His body restored to prime condition and the weight of the second piece of armor no longer strained his body.
“How does it feel with only a single piece?” Bob asked as Keith moved around.
“I can definitely still feel it,” he replied. “I don’t know if it feels better due to the contrast of how much worse that second piece was though.”
There really was only one way to test it, which would be deactivating all the armor, giving himself a few hours to acclimate to the feeling, before reactivating it to see if there was a difference.
“Guess that means we can break for lunch,” Bob said, rubbing his paws together.
“Should we do something about all the corpses first?” Tac asked. “You may no longer be pulling monsters in from every direction, but I have a feeling they’ll keep coming if you’re serving up such a great buffet.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Keith agreed as he began going around to the numerous bodies and looting them one by one.
It took him longer than he’d have liked, but once he was finished, he used Stone Chucker to lift a small shelf of rock against one of the slopes. He set up his tent inside, effectively hiding it from the eyes of monsters. Given all the death in the area, he hoped it would cover up the smell if anything.
Keith sat in one of the chairs and removed simple food items. He wasn’t feeling like having anything fancy, especially given the ordeal he’d just put himself through, but he did need to eat, and it met his needs. Once he was done, Keith changed into something more comfortable and slid into one of the beds in the back room for a short nap. He couldn’t allow himself to take more than a couple of hours, but he was surprised at how tired he felt, given that he could normally go on for quite a while before feeling true fatigue.
He supposed it was the armor that had taken so much out of him, which made sense. Constantly feeling like your body was about to fall apart and powering on through despite that was a great way to exhaust oneself.
Keith was out cold as soon as his head hit the pillow, with Bob agreeing to stay up and keep watch in case any monsters sniffed them out. He was thankful that no one bothered him, and when he woke up, he felt refreshed and reenergized. His body was in peak form, so as he exited the tent, he activated the breastplate again.
He could feel the familiar pain creeping in as soon as he did. It was definitely more intense than it had felt after deactivating the gauntlets but didn’t feel as bad as the last time. He took a breath and then activated the second piece again. The pain that ripped through him was anything but pleasant. But, as with the first piece, it wasn’t quite as bad.
His bones ached but didn’t feel like they were about to snap. His body buzzed with the pain, his muscles feeling taut and tendons like they’d been overstretched, and his internal organs roiled. Still, this level of pain was more manageable than the last. If he had to fight like this against a dangerous opponent, he believed he could do so without allowing the pain to become a deadly distraction. It meant it was time to try activating a third piece.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Tac said. “In fact, I think it’s a really bad idea.”
“I won’t know until I try,” Keith replied as he braced himself.
He activated the kilt this time, deciding that the extra Vitality might help him to push through. For once, he was wrong –very much so. As soon as the kilt began to activate, his bones began splintering and cracking, his skin began to tear, organs began to swell, and his blood began to burn him from the inside out. His muscles began pulling apart, and his tendons began snapping one by one. He wasn’t even halfway through the activation, and the pain had shot up to levels so great it was nearly mind-numbing, and Keith knew it would only become worse.
His health began to plummet as his body destroyed itself, but Keith persisted, using his healing skills more liberally as the activation continued. He began to see red around the corners of his vision as the pain assaulted his mind. He could feel the pressure inside his head mounting by the millisecond as the kilt finished with its activation, leaving him wearing three active pieces of the armor.
Through the absolute agony of his body ripping itself apart and being healed, Keith could feel the increase to his stats as they were improved by a factor of five. He could also – through narrowed eyes – see the aura begin to spread around him as Apex Predator activated alongside Echo of Conflict.
Keith tried to move but found himself unable to take so much as a single step. His health was dropping faster now, bones shattering, organs rupturing, and muscles and tendons tearing. His head felt like it was about to explode. In the span of half a minute, he’d gone through nearly every single one of his heals, losing millions of points of health in the process. Finally, when he basically had nothing left, he used Endless Vitality.
It was a very painful process and nearly caused him to lose consciousness many times, but he endured the agonizing destruction of his body, focusing instead on simply trying to move as it stitched itself back together. Through the entire minute of Endless Vitality, he tried to take a single step or throw a single punch but found himself unable to. His body was destroying itself too quickly, and it seemed that at this level of power, the debuffs were most certainly sticking. Torn muscles and broken bones meant that he couldn’t move, and while he was being healed, the breaks and tears were happening too quickly for him to try sneaking in a punch or kick.
He even tried pushing up into the air but couldn’t muster the focus through the mind-numbing agony. Then his sixty seconds were up, and he was forced to deactivate the kilt, feeling his stats drop as the agony tapered off. It wasn’t quite the same sensation as last time, as his body still buzzed with pain, but when he dropped back down to a single piece of armor – that being the breastplate, he barely felt it.
Leaning over and breathing hard, Keith took a few moments to gather himself. It seemed that two pieces really was his limit right now. He couldn’t even move with the third active and needed constant healing not to immediately die, which meant that he’d need to wait until tomorrow if he wanted to do it again, seeing as he was out of heals. Keith would have more, as he’d lost some in his fight against Inquisitor Number 9 and hoped that the experience would help him endure it better.
For now, he kept one of the pieces active as he collapsed his tent and teleported to the last location where the bunker had been set up. It was eerily quiet as he arrived, which was strange, given the dark clouds looming overhead.
“Those don’t look natural,” Bob muttered as he stepped from the gate a couple hundred feet in the air.
Unconquerable Aura flared around him, keeping him aloft as he looked around. His eyes couldn’t pierce through the bunker’s walls, so he couldn’t see who was inside, if anyone, but the place felt abandoned somehow, despite the fact that it was entirely possible everyone was simply inside.
He wasn’t sure why he felt that way. Perhaps it was the massive banks of black storm clouds hanging low in the sky blotting out most of the light. Maybe it was the flashes of white lightning, which were certainly uncommon as the usual red was blocked out by the storm.
“I think we’re near the edge of the storm,” Tac said as Keith hovered for a moment. “If we are, then this is the largest one I’ve ever seen.”
Keith’s frown deepened a bit as he mentally reached out to Selena.
“Where is everyone?”
It took her a moment to answer, which was a bit alarming in and of itself, but when her voice came through, it was natural, if a bit strained.
“Keith. I take it you’re back at the bunker?”
He replied in the affirmative.
“We decided to be a bit proactive,” Selena said. “Melkin believed we were nearing the middle point of the continent and wanted to see if we could push there without you. Since you told us to keep working while you were away, I decided to split the group in two and do just that.”
“Is there anyone at all in the bunker?” Keith asked.
“Just the kids,” Selena replied. “The Artificial Mind is looking after them. It’s not ideal, but Melkin said we’d need everyone for this.”
“I take it she’s not with you then?” Keith asked.
“No, she’s with the other group. We’re about twenty miles apart, close enough to get to if anyone really needs help, but far enough that we won’t miss anything crucial.”
“Who’s with you?”
“I have Merry and Bessie,” Selena said. “Bonker, Bruiser, Navy, Otis, Ripper, Little Timmy, and Simmy are all with me. The rest are in the other group.”
“Why did you make the split that way?” Keith asked, pursing his lips.
It meant that most of the automatons were on the other team, along with Melkin, their healer, and alchemist, as well as the remaining fighters. The problem was that while the group was larger, the overall combat power was quite a bit lower.
“We needed a team that could move faster without being afraid and warn the other team if anything too dangerous came into our sights. We’re twenty miles apart laterally, but they’re also a good five miles behind us.”
Keith nodded at that, seeing her logic. They’d also made sure to keep the healer with them, which was good. If someone weaker were injured, they would have a much harder time fighting through.
“How far are you from the middle section of the continent?” Keith asked. “And can you see the same storm I can from camp?”
“We’re about three hundred miles by Melkin’s reckoning,” Selena said. “But I’ll have better figures in an hour when we meet back up. We’ve been staggering rests so we intersect, and we start moving closer to one another at regular intervals.”
It really did seem like a lot of thought had gone into this. Keith was impressed at their forethought, though he had to wonder if Melkin was the one to really thank for this plan.
“As for the storm, yes. It’s been building for the past couple of days, though. Melkin seems to think it’s monster-related. Probably doesn’t help that we haven’t seen so much as a sign of one all day, but we’re being cautious and sticking close to the caves in case we see things getting worse.”
