The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Still Day 4 (In-game)

Still somewhere in the draculkar highlands.

Still somewhere in the southern end of the Urla Mountains.

Status: Being chased by a horde of jumping shaggy monsters who took exception to him using their leader as a trampoline.

*

The lichenyak tossed its head as Krow fell.

He twisted in mid-air to avoid the pointed battering ram, grabbed onto a lower ledge and heaved himself up, spitting dust from the debris.

A triumphant bellow split the air. Too close!

He rolled off, triggering doublejump.

Two monsters slammed onto the ledge he was on. Seven darkspears to see their corpses stumble and lay still.

[You've gained two (2) serpens from a monster!]

[You've gained two (2) serpens from a monster!]

He reached for a higher handhold, clambered onto the trunk of a tree bent nearly half to horizontal, growing out of a crevice.

He drank a Low Heal.

How many were left?

He squinted against the midday sun, the realism of the game causing sweat to roll down his temples and back.

Four? Yes, four still following.

The expanding marks of lichen on their long fur gleamed in the sun, in what could only be magic. Krow grimaced. He had enough examples to know that mostly-decimating a group of monsters would Enrage the ones still left.

One lichenyak jumped up the ledge and saw the two carcasses.

It bellowed, loud and furious.

Shkav. Four bullets ended it, but it was already too late.

[You've gained two (2) serpens from a monster!]

An answering bellow came from afar. The others he could see huffed smoke, all but breathing fire, eyes trained on him.

Or maybe he was just imagining the red in their teeth…?

The leaves of the tree he was on rustled. The branches shuddered.

The stone must be thick, as the trees growing on the cliffs weren't rooted deep enough.

The thought only just crossed his mind when a root lashed around his ankle.

He made an inarticulate sound of shock.

The tree root tightened, and another reached.

Krow shot the root around his ankle. It splintered. He jumped away uncaring of destination, kicking away the rest of the root.

He scrabbled for a hold on the boulder he crashed against, managing a foothold.

Okay, he breathed. Lichenyaks were floral element aligned monsters.

He knew that. But he thought they only learned to control plants after Lvl 20. He eyed the lichenyaks on the peaks above him. Apparently, also when Enraged.

He'd only encountered lichenyaks in Redlands once before. They were generally Lvl 10-20 creatures, with the strongest rarely achieving Lvl 25-30. The game didn't advertise level zones, but it was rare to see monsters with massively different levels in one area.

From the hundred-tail swallow and the lichenyaks, he'd assumed this was an under-20 level zone.

He wasn't expecting the plant control.

A sound from above and he started running, eyes searching.

His MP was depleted from all the doublejumps, no chance to use Shadowbind.

He saw a deep and large crack in the rock, no trees or roots nearby, and jumped toward it.

Not ideal, but Krow had to negate the advantage the lichenyaks had – their damnable mobility.

So far, he didn't think they were used to having an attacker as agile as him on the cliffs. He was certain the lichenyaks were using anti-bird-predator tactics against him…that is, harry the birds to below the peaks, then jump on them from above.

With them raging, he couldn't keep waiting for his MP to replenish enough for the Doublejump Spell.

He landed on a jutting rock, grabbed a handhold, and swung into the dark crevice.

It was larger than Krow thought.

The opening was large enough for two lichenyak to enter abreast. He could hear them in his wake, following still.

Within the crevice was a space large enough for half a tower.

It was a cave.

The small stalagmite and stalactite pillars told him that it had been here for a long time.

The sound of falling pebbles alerted Krow from his wary peering around the crevice. He looked toward the opening, revolver rising.

A lichenyak charged, another not too far behind, bellowing.

[Lichenyak Lvl 13 (17)]

[HP: 800 (1100)]

[MP: 30 (45)]

Krow emptied the cylinder into it before it tumbled, corpse coming to a stop less than a meter from him.

[You've gained two (2) serpens from a monster!]

The trailing lichenyak stumbled on the falling corpse, giving Krow time to swap cylinders and distance himself.

He shot eight darkspears before the second lichenyak stilled. Then eight again at the one darkening the cave opening.

[You've gained two (2) serpens from a monster!]

[You've gained two (2) serpens from a monster!]

Sixteen darkspears one after the other.

He swapped cylinders and fired six upward, where a fourth lichenyak made its way through the upper part of the crack.

The monster fell, the last of the lichenyak's struggles fading mid-air. It thudded on the ground of the cave a corpse.

[You've gained two (2) serpens from a monster!]

If this were a yakuza movie, he thought as he stood there with gun lowered slowly, the tail of his coat would be snapping in the breeze instead of just flickering a little, and the thundering sounds of the shots echoing in the far cliffs.

Too bad the gun didn't roar like gunpowder revolvers did. The Starfall Revolver sounded more like the discharge of an shrouded airgun.

That was four, but he wasn't certain it was all of them.

He waited.

Nothing sounded; no new lichenyak on some ledge, glaring at him like he offended the shaggy goat gods. No tell-tale trickle of debris, no lowing or bellowing.

Krow peered out the crack.

At least six corpses were visible to him.

The peaks were quiet.

A bellow sounded, long and low, less aggressive than the rest.

His hand on the gun tightened, alert.

But nothing came at him.

He holstered the revolver, drank a Low Heal, and plopped down at the lip of the crack.

Still cautious, ears and senses alert, he started reloading the other cylinders.

Long minutes passed, and there was nothing more than wind hissing by.

He replenished the bullets of the cylinder installed on the revolver.

The lichenyak ram had given up.

He unequipped the Travelcoat and the Bonewood Gauntlets, replacing the latter with Plague Doctor's Gauntlets.

He touched the first lichenyak.

[You've gained Shaggy Lichenyak Hide from a monster!]

The lichenyak before him was now devoid of its greyish-green outer hide.

Krow removed the smaller butcher knife from the thigh holster on his left leg. Gaining First Apprentice rank for the Butcher subclass allowed him to equip two butcher knives as offhand weapons.

Oh wait.

He removed the vid-eye owl from his Inventory. It immediately flapped its wings and flew to rest on a stalagmite.

Krow shrugged and let it be.

He'd never had one before.

Before, he thought RedVisor was for high-level players to show off their skills and those who made short movies and music videos set against breathtaking Redlands geography and people.

The deliveryman-installer said it would add viewing angles to his recordings.

His first video was kludged together using just the view-angle of his avatar's eyes. It wasn't bad at all, in his opinion. The butchering style was clear and the voice-over he put together was gave all the data needed without being heavy or solemn.

It wasn't flashy, but he thought it showed the Butcher skills pretty well.

Krow could make a good video without multiple angles, but he had the vid-eye owl anyway. Might as well use it.

He put it out of his mind and started on the butchering.

Three lichenyak in the cave, and at least six more outside. Barring the ones that fell completely off the ridge.

He stroked the knife around the neck, then down the underside of the carcass between the breasts, across the legs. Peeling the inner hide off was a bit tricky, as the lichenyak was taller than him by at least sixty centimeters and heavier by at least three hundred kilos.

[You've butchered a monster to acquire Lichenyak Skin!]

The notifications kept coming as he slowly practiced motions he'd learned in Zushkenar. He'd learned to dress game, but it hadn't been his primary job.

Being in Redlands, some of the motions were unnecessary and a number of organs were missing. Obviously most of the insides of the beasts in Redlands were based on Earth animals.

In Zushkenar, they were…a bit further from the norm.

Also, the lichenyak was free of the parasites that Krow half-expected to be there. A bonus, that's for certain.

There was a Spell for removing parasites from game, but he didn't know it.

A few skills and Spells in certain professions were not included in the standard subclass skill package and had to be learned from a master of the class, which could be an NPC or a craftmaster.

The carcass yielded a Bonewood skeleton, a hundred kilos of edible meat, and five kilos of edible tendon.

After taking all that could be butchered, what was left of the lichenyak would, when he left, slowly begin to melt, like a mass of ice cream in the sun.

He got through the other two in good time and started on the lichenyaks laid out in the sun outside.

One of them unexpectedly yielded [Flowercurl Horn] which he thought came from bloomwool sheep in Amvard continent. They were a similar species? Bloomwool sheep didn't yield Bonewood though.

The horn was a D+ Common. Not very distinguished but useful in repairing floral-element armor. Also used to make several musical instruments.

Something huffed above him.

His eyes widened.

He tossed the horn into his Inventory and dove over the carcass he was butchering.

Dust and debris flew as the monster crashed down on the ledge.

[Lichenyak Herdleader Lvl 21(27)]

[HP: 1200(2800)]

[MP: 110(150)]

He slipped on blood. "Gah!"

Fumbled his equip of the Travelcoat.

The raging bellow of the lichenyak ram deafened at close range.

"I said it was an accident!" He drew the revolver.

Sixteen darkspears sent, and that only cut half off the monster's inflated HP. It had better defense than its herdmembers. It limped toward him, bellowed again, then charged.

The patterns on its fur glowed.

"Shkav!"

100MP gone. But it had all its HP back.

Who the hell knew lichenyak had HP recovery like that?!

Krow switched to shieldbursts, hoping to topple it off the ledge. The herdleader charged through the shieldbursts with only minor stumbles.

Krow gained higher ground in the meantime. Sent another sixteen darkspears, dodging all the while the roots and vines and tree branches lashing out at him.

It jumped after him, Enraged and ignoring its injuries.

Two sharp vines pierced Krow through the side. Ow.

7% HP gone.

He flipped to hang off a crack in a plantless stone slope.

"I don't suppose we could let bygones lie? I break your ribs, you spear my kidneys, we're even?"

A braid of vines dug into the stone he hung off of, his handhold crumbling.

He doublejumped to the top of a rock pillar. "I see, I see. You're one of those death before dishonor types."

He tracked the leaping ram, shooting. Nine out of sixteen bullets hit.

Tsk.

"I've been the obsessive type, I know. Still am, really. I get it. But we must transcend!"

The ram toppled a rock formation onto Krow's pillar, obviously just wanting to end him forever. 2% HP taken by the flying shards of stone.

Krow flailed as the pillar fell. He jumped from stone to stone, senses alert. Huh. He was in fact, close to where he topped the ridge earlier.

He leaped free of the falling debris and doublejumped into air, arms wide, nothing below him. The herdleader followed, unwearying.

Krow took a moment to savor the freefall.

Then flipped and triggered a doublejump while throwing a grapplehook toward a crack in an overhang above. It snagged, changed his trajectory enough to avoid horns that were longer than his legs for the second time this day.

He grinned at the lichenyak. "We must learn to let go."

He doublejumped again, his last for a while, used the rope and momentum to fly upward. He let go the rope and closed his eyes, smiling. He hit the highpoint of the parabolic arc and started to fall.

He flipped, bracing.

His boots crashed into the back of the herdleader, exacerbating the downward fall of the monster already caught in gravity.

The lichenyak slammed into the sharp crown of a naturally-sculpted minaret. Krow dropped down to his knees. Even cushioned (again) by the furry bulk of the herdleader, that fall had sheered off some of his HP.

The ram shuddered, impaled on a stone spike through the chest, bloody spike just missing the spine. It turned its head, bulging eye glaring still at Krow.

"Or we fail to see the pitfalls around us, due to tunnelvision," Krow finished.

He swapped to his last full darkspear cylinder. Seven bullets before the lichenyak drooped. It was technically a waste of bullets, as the ram was going nowhere.

It was a mass of data, numbers and letters, but the least Krow could do for a creature so tenacious was to give a quick death instead of leaving it there to rot alive.

Krow sat down on the fleecy carcass, a long breath leaving his lips. His hand touched the lichenyak fur.

[You've gained Earthblow Gyrehorns from a monster!]

[You've gained ten (10) serpens from a boss monster!]

He ignored it.

He'd just killed a Lvl 21 Enraged monster, he thought disbelieving. A Lvl 27.

He was Lvl 6, for sanity's sake!

He took a deep breath, then sprawled out on the soft grey-green fur, laughed breathlessly.

This time in Redlands was definitely way different from the last time.