The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Krow stood on a ledge, the area around him only lighted by the gentle glow of moon-bramble behind him. Without the moon, they were already dimming.

Too bad. Draculkar didn't have perfect vision at night.

Good thing he bought lamps and torches.

Moonset was the line that split the two parts of the Zushkenari night. Enilhadrad in most parts of the Marfall continent rose around midday and set in the middle of the night.

The first half of the night was still buoyant, the light from the great Sky-Mother brightening the lands more than Earth's smaller satellite.

The problem, Krow mused from his perch, was the second half of the night.

After Enilhadrad set, the sky was the domain of the stars and Orveterne.

Zushkenar, in fact, had two moons.

Enilhadrad rose and set regularly, and Orveterne didn't set at all.

Krow let his eyes wander the sky, this second night after a second twilight, searching for the elusive body that the sirens called the Mist Moon, the Hidden Daughter.

There.

His hands clenched briefly, ice with an electric crackle coursing down his spine – a learned reaction, as he saw a pale white circle emerging from a cloudbank.

Orveterne, known in the human part of Zushkenar as 'the Eye', short for 'the Eye of Gods', was smaller in size than Earth's moon.

Some people also called it the Bloodcaller, a warning. The monsters that came out after moonset were more aggressive, more difficult to kill, their aggro zones greater.

Woe to travelers, because Orveterne would call a tide of blood to the unwary.

Player theories put Orveterne to be Zushkenar's actual satellite.

It was dim, and only showed fully when the sky was clear and other heavenly bodies didn't detract from its presence.

The fact that it never set, simply hanging in the sky like an accidental and forgotten smudge on a painter's canvas, sparked something of a debate in the forums. Most of the popular theories believed it was artificial, and the next big upgrade would bring the Redlands wars to space.

If that was true, it was never implemented.

And trying to survive wartorn Zushkenar gave little margin for dreaming of star-travel.

Krow's fingers tapped on his revolver holster as he stared at the pale herald of death that was unusually clearer in the sky and waited.

The vargvir guard sighed from behind him. He heard a rustle of clothes against bark.

He was still too close to the village for her suspicion to fade completely, but she'd relaxed a lot from the level of caution she had hours earlier.

He smiled.

With a snap of a wrist, a grappling hook appeared in his hands, already hurtling upward and forward.

Rope still running through his hands, he leaped off the cliff.

"Hey!"

His grin widened. From her tone, she didn't have any items or skills that would allow her to follow him.

The rope tautened. The branch of a stunted grandshield tree reaching fragilely over the ravine, the reason he chose the ledge, creaked and twisted.

He hauled harder, already at the far point of the swing.

It broke.

The rope slackened in his hands.

A heart-stopping moment later, he crashed into the shrubs on the other side of the ravine, rolled and bounced to his feet unharmed.

Success!

Due to his minor rampage through the monster nests near Gremut, his Dexterity was now high enough for minor stunts!

Krow waved at the bramble-light backed guard on the other side of the ravine and hid in the tree line. She cursed loudly but indistinctly and turned sharply around, leaving.

He brought out the long golden Crystalwing Bone.

The Ghostcaller subclass afforded him three spirits to control, but he couldn't find any Ghost Stones – items that were made from monster bones to hold a facsimile of a spirit – in the Gremut shops.

He could only use the Crystalwing Bone he gained from the Armored Mothmarmot. The Bone should be processed to make it suitable for use by a Ghostcaller, but hah, the perks of having a Magic Aptitude of 11.

The high aptitude allowed him to just brute-force the creation of the illusory spirit body.

The spell for ghost stones was universal: "Appear."

An illusory Armored Mothmarmot burst from the Crystalwing Bone, spreading wings to immediately leap into air. He watched as it started soaring in ever widening circles above him. The real thing's wings were too delicate to hold the mothmarmot body like so.

Krow smiled. He got lucky that his first ghost was a flying one.

His last quest was for Ethereal Condorowl feathers.

A hunting quest.

According to the bartender at the Crossed Dragon – the only apparently 'respectable' tavern in Gremut – who had given him the quest, the condorowl only nested in the highest peaks of the highest mountains. Said barman was nearly brained by a crafter who overheard, because it wasn't a job for amateur hunters.

Krow accepted because was curious what kind of quest was 'not amateur' but readily given to a newbie player. Of course, that was when he was informed that the condorowl only woke at moonset.

At Lvl 5, he really shouldn't be taking a hunt after moonset. The weakest monsters would be about the same difficulty as the Armored Mothmarmot. The average shadow beast needed multiple people to defeat, and the strongest were raid-level monsters.

But then he checked the Quest Page and nearly choked in surprise.

|:Pluck the Condorowl:|

[Category: Rare (Beginner)]

[Dhunancholku of Clan Menggei, proprietor of the Cross Dragon, has asked you to acquire three Ethereal Condorowl Tailfeathers.]

[You will gain: +5 Reputation Points, +15 Experience Points, +1 Golden Drax, +(???)]

Rare quests were not actually that rare.

Redlands was a transforming open world; there were side quests of varying rewards at every corner, bush, and stream.

But this was a Rare beginner quest. Beginner quests were just chores, meant to get the player acquainted with the virtual world and their virtual bodies, were only important strategically because of the Reputation Points.

It wasn't as easy to earn RP after the Beginner Quest Sequence was finished and the player gained Lvl 5.

The point was, if asked before he saw the above quest info, Krow would have said there were no Rare beginner quests.

Maybe this was the effect of finishing the Hidden Quest?

If so, it was something he earned; he wasn't giving it up.

Not to mention, acquiring unknown rewards in quests were like opening good presents – they were always interesting. There were also RP milestones for how many successive quests a player finished successfully.

Krow wasn't in a state for a fight on the level of the Armored Mothmarmot again. But knowledge was an advantage, and finishing a hunting quest didn't always mean battle.

The quest only asked for feathers, not a kill count.

He was fine with sneaking the feathers. Good thing the quest completion ratings didn't apply to beginner quests, or he'd have to fight to keep his quest rating average up.

He decided he wasn't finishing the quest tonight.

This night, he was scouting for a nest.

"Informative surveillance," Krow quoted, sarcastically, "is the mark of a good hunter."

Craftmaster Ortholian had recommended him to a friend for hunting tips, and to his embarrassment it had taken a week of lessons before he caught on that the craftmaster's friend hunted people rather than monsters. For fun.

He'd never taken the craftmaster's recommendations at face value after that.

Krow pinned the Map to his visuals, letting the frame hang in the air at the edge of his vision, but the only indication of the spirit scouting was that the unexplored areas around him had a lighter fog – he could almost see through it.

Almost.

He could see the location of the condorowl nest, limned with the gold of an active quest. But with no indication if there were condorowls there or how many.

He watched as that almost-vision of the Ghostcaller-explored areas made a full circle, indicating that the ghost had come to the end of its leash. A hundred-meter radius, not bad.

He took out a lamp, and opened the top. Weak light spilled out of the glass sides and the open top. It was already burning, as it was when Krow bought it. Unlike the guard's cheery orange light, this glowed a faint blue.

Krow bought it after learning that condorowls hunted at moonset. He was lucky there was even one in the village.

It was called a wraithlight, and it only gave illumination to the owner. It was a suspicious item, commonly reputed to be used by those up to no good, which was why the shop in the village sold it to him only after he swore it was for hunting, and yet for a premium price of 510 drax.

It was one of the smaller ones, the soft light only strong enough to reach a four-meter radius around the lamp. If Krow didn't seriously need the wraithlight, he'd have called the woman out on blatant banditry and left.

Admittedly, if he didn't have 135 RP with Gremut as a whole (from quests and decimating nearby monster nests), he'd probably have been kicked out the moment he said he was looking for wraith lights. Or thief-lights or ghost-lights as they're more popularly known in certain circles.

He pricked his finger, waited for the blood to well up and drop onto the glowstone, which was emitting wisps of smoke like sublimating dry ice.

The light brightened.

[Small Experimental Wraithlight Lamp has been blood-bound! You have 59:59 hours of illumination left.]

Huh. The shopkeep must have made the item herself.

How many enchanters were there in one draculkar village?

Closing the lamp back up and looping its leather handle around his wrist, Krow started moving through the trees.

The light wasn't as bright as sunlight, or even moonlight. It was enough for the natural sight of the draculkar race to keep Krow from stumbling on roots and underbrush even as he loped through the wood.

Still, he got whipped unceasingly by thin branches as he scrambled as fast as he can toward the map-marked monster nest.

"Why are the Dryads the race that gets full vision in darkness?" he grumbled. "Why not the Dwarvir, who actually live in caverns? Or draculkar. This draculkar could use full night vision."

A glance at the Map told him that, as he moved, the areas semi-uncovered by the Ghostcaller spirit were once again slowly being taken over by the fog that marked unexplored terrain. The only marks left were several more monster nests, but they weren't the quest objective.

Too bad.

Using Ghostcaller to open the map instead of walking all over would save him a lot of work.

The shops in Gremut didn't have Map Pieces for sale, unfortunately. So for now, his Map only showed the places he'd explored personally.

He was just grateful that Ghostcaller abilities added to the Target Marking of the Tracker subclass meant that interesting locations would show up on his Map if ghost-explored, even if the ghost-scouted areas were temporary.

The ghost-scouted monster nests wouldn't show exactly the type of monster they held until Krow got there and scouted it properly, but it was probably more windrats, blegh.

A flash on the Map had him stopping.

What, there was a road?!

There was a road so close and he'd been enduring a jog through lashing underbrush for a half hour??

Gah.

He was headed north, and the part of the road uncovered on the map…

"What luck, the road's headed that way too." He moved toward the paved road in the hope of no leafy branches being whipped into his face.

He'd only been fifteen minutes on the road, when a dark shadow blotted the faint light of Orveterne.

Abruptly, he froze, slowly tipped his head upward.

The bird banked and passed overhead again. He dove into the tree line, attempted to snuff out the lamp before remembering it was a ghost light, and hoped he hadn't been sensed.

That was a condorowl.

That was a condorowl?

Its body alone was bigger than a house! Its beak was probably as tall as a man!

No wonder the crafter said it was not an amateur quest.

Friend, that was an understatement.