Chapter 79: Escort (3) (Patreon)

World: MSS - Loading...

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｢ +7 EXP ｣

｢ +3 EXP ｣

｢ +8 EXP ｣

The expedition was going smoothly.  Almost too smoothly.

Since I gave Stole that peptalk, she fulfilled her job as a [Pioneer] with renewed gusto.  The girl took the role very seriously and we could all see that she was taking more care than before.  Beads of sweat dropped from her chin whenever she swirled her head, ears listening for nearby monsters and her 6th sense, so to speak, fixed on the Boss Monster of this dungeon.

If she could get the Passive Ability, [Monsterdex], she’d become very formidable.  It was an ability that allowed you to get an estimate of the monster’s strength plus knowledge about one of its random abilities.  

While I was locked in my own thoughts about how to recruit an underaged beastman who was sister to the Kagura into my party without repercussions (I didn’t know which was worse, the fact that she was underaged or was related to one of the most important person in the beastman village), Dorothy lagged behind to talk to me.

“What’d you tell the little brat?”

I didn’t break my stride nor did I wince as Dorothy’s Giant Wolf padded next to me.  Fighting the urge to comment that it smelled like wet dog near her, I answered her.

“I told her how heavy the responsibility she bears is.  As a [Pioneer].”  

“Hm.”  Dorothy’s blue eyes studied the back of Stole, who pointed in another direction and began to lead us further in.  “Well, it worked.  Good job.”

For a few minutes we walked on in silence.  But in my head, I was counting the seconds till Dorothy started talking again, she didn’t seem like the type to enjoy it.  I wasn’t disappointed either.

“So… we’re going to be fighting in the Colosseum.”  Dorothy said offhandedly, like she was commenting on the weather.  “Any thoughts?”

I frowned.  “I don’t think that’s appropriate to talk about right now.”

“Well, I don’t like beating around the bush or avoiding the pink elephant in the room.  We both know what’s going to happen and this little expedition ain’t going to change shit.”

I could understand why Dorothy and Stole didn’t get along.  They were simply too similar to each other.  The candid speech, the rough demeanor.  Just two thugs who happened to be on different sides of the fence.

“Let’s concentrate on this dungeon.”

“Psh.”  Dorothy snorted, completely unladylike.  “Fuck that noise.  This dungeon is filled with Grade-7 monsters.  The boss-monster will be Grade-7.  Maybe-6 if we’re unlucky, but even then I’m pretty sure with you, Gurran and me; we could clear this dungeon easily.”

Were all Scions like this?

No… Aurora wasn’t like this and neither was Gurran.  He seemed normal enough.  It was just Dorothy.

“Hey, tell me about how you got mixed up with Oung.”  She finally said, when it was clear that I wasn’t willing to talk about our Colosseum fight.

“I too, am curious, Mister.”  Shara chimed in.

“...I thought you didn’t believe in Oung.”

“Well, you’re not going to talk about the Colosseum aren’t you?  And what’s it to you what I believe or not believe? Call her Oung or a highly-intelligent boss-monster, makes no difference to me.”

Shara frowned but didn’t comment.

I didn’t want to talk about the Colosseum fight because I was afraid I’d let slip something valuable and affect the fight in any way.  With my new [Tortured Spirit] Core, I was pretty sure I could beat Dorothy 9 times out of 10.  But on the off-chance that I said something unnecessary, it could easily turn into a fifty-fifty fight.  That was how fights worked in MSS, especially if your levels were relatively close.  If Dorothy had been fighting in the Colosseum for a while, she definitely had the connections necessary to swap out Cores before a fight.

Which also meant she was probably loaded.

Thinking back to Dorothy’s question, I found no fault in speaking about Oung.  Besides, I wanted to hear their experience with the goddess as well.

“I was a Slave for the Samak Horde.  Running from Slave Hunters, I entered a dungeon.  There, I found a hidden shrine dedicated to Oung.  That’s where I met her for the first time.”

“That’s your fucking story?”  Dorothy whined.  “Bud, don’t quit your day job.  Worst storyteller I’ve ever met.”

I wanted to roll my eyes but held myself back.  And Kyrian tells me I have no tact.

“It was my first time hearing the voice of a goddess.  It was… well, it was horrifying.”  My mind brought me back to the subterranean dungeon. The stature of stone with eyes made of flesh, watching my every movement.  The voice that commanded me, overpowering my Will and taking away the freedom of choice simply because I was too weak.

The way the statue moved like it was something that just did not belong in this world.  Both my old one and this one.

I shuddered.

Dorothy had been watching me and nodded.  “Yeah.  I understand that feeling.”

“You and Gurran?”

“We met her at separate times, so you’re going to have to get Gurran’s story from him.”  Dorothy began, her eyes narrowing and pressing her lips together.  Her wolf whined as she began her story.

“I did a stint for the Church for a couple of years.  Hunting [Artifacts], [Legendary] items and the occasional [Plurality] if we could get our hands on it.  A lot of the indirect descendants, bastards and weaker Scions who were cast out by the main family end up getting in with the Church.”  She shrugged.  “The Church offers a way out of all that nonsense.”

“Anyways, we got news about a Dungeon near the border of Zimmskar holding a relic.  Of course, Zimmskar sent out their own party to investigate.”

We took another turn.  The frequency of monster encounters was decreasing.  Perhaps this Boss Monster was one of those that drove mob monsters away from it.

“We get to the dungeon, days after seeing beastman tracks.  We go in expecting a fight but no one was there.”

“Did they already clear the Dungeon?”  Shara asked.

It seemed to be that after years of being Stole’s sister, Shara knew how to make Dorothy’s story more interesting too, asking just the right questions at just the right time.

“No.”  Dorocian Kojisa’s eyes fixed on Shara with sudden intensity.  “They were killed by a Beastman.”

Shara frowned.  “But Zimmskar is-”

“I don’t know where he was from.  Maybe he was from Zimmskar.  Maybe he was a runaway slave from Turina.  Maybe he’s one of those nomads who doesn’t call his home anywhere.”  Dorothy muttered.  “But he… looked old.  Really really old.  Ancient.”  She shook her head.  “We thought we were preparing to fight a party of beastman, not a fucking monster that looked like a beastman.”

“What happened?”  I asked.

“Nothing.  That’s it.  We knew we were no match for him so we all hid.  I was hiding underneath some rubble, knowing that the bastard was trying to sniff us all out.  My party back then was used to being hunted, because half the time we were hunting down heretics of the Church.  But we all knew, he’d find us eventually.”  Dorothy reached out and patted the side of her wolf.

“What about your encounter with Oung?”

“She’s the one who let us get out.  A huge portal opened up and, poof, he was gone.  Just like that.”

There were a number of things fishy with Dorothy’s story.  First, who was this old beastman? Besides the fact that he turned on his own kind, it was almost unbelievable that he could eliminate a party sent by a nation.  They’d have to be several grades apart for that to happen and I was willing to bet gold that the adventurers chosen by Zimmskar weren’t newbies.  Which meant that the old beastman was even stronger than that.

Second, Oung wouldn’t let them slip out of the dungeon for free.  In my personal experience, the goddess made me earn everything I had with every scrap of my being with the risk of death walking hand in hand with reward.  No, Dorothy was omitting some things.  She had to do something to get out of there and it was either personal or-

“Shame.”  I answered my own question.  

I could only guess at what could possibly cause the woman to feel shame at what she did.  Perhaps Oung made her kill her party mates.  Perhaps she was forced to give up one of her summons forever.

Or maybe I was just throwing darts in the air and nowhere close to the mark.  I skipped the parts about me dueling the Lucky Beckoning Cat and the double boss fight near the end and it wasn’t like I was ashamed of those happenings.  It simply hadn’t been necessary to mention minor details that, in the grand scheme of things, didn’t change the fact that we had become entangled with Oung somehow.

“Storytime’s over.”  Gurran’s voice brought us out of our musings.  “Over there.  It must be the Guardian of this place.”

Bare feet plopped on the fresh wet grave soil, leaving large prints.  Its limbs were long and sinuous, slick with sweat and blood with pieces of dirt marring the tanned skin.  The creature wore a loincloth, which was just as well because everything below the neck was anatomically human, if a human was seven feet tall with limbs reaching a better part of six.  Above the neck was the head of a bird without all the unnecessary things like flesh.

A boss-class monster called Thần Trùng with a grading of 7.

“Thần Trùng.  Haven’t killed one of these in a while.”  Dorothy muttered.

I almost quipped ‘Me too’.  Well, Han killed a lot of these.  For Lock –still me– it was the first time killing one.

“I’ve never seen one of these.”  Stole muttered, giving me a quizzical glance.

Well, it wouldn’t hurt to explain to a newbie what she was in for.  The words came naturally, giving the main points of the monster and how to defeat it.  Gods knew, I did it often enough in the forums back in my previous world.

“It’s called a Thần Trùng, a caster-summoner type monster.  It’ll try to stay at range, weaken us with various curses and its summons.  But it has big wind-up movements, so you can tell when it’s getting ready for a big spell.  Stay back, keep your eyes peeled.  As someone who’ll be fighting in the back, you might have a better inkling of when the monster is about to do something big.  Make sure to let us know when.”

Giving Stole this advice reminded me of the times when I used to play a Beastman Pioneer build, though I often went the double crossbow gun route instead of the heavy arbalest.

“...What?”  I said after a moment of heavy silence.

“Nothing.”  Stole muttered, turning away the moment our eyes made contact.  “So how do we kill it?”

“Hard and fast.  Caster-type monsters like these are usually squishy.”  Dorothy suggested, searching for Gurran’s eyes.

Silently, I agreed but didn’t want to stand out too much.  Stole’s reaction had been less than ideal, her eyes had looked at me in a different light than when we first met.

Gurran said nothing for a minute, studying the monster that paced back and forth, thinking.  His personality was a good counter to Dorothy’s brashness.  The Thần Trùng occasionally put its beaked skull in its hands and shook its head like trying to get rid of fleas or shaking off a bad headache.

“I go in first, draw its attention.  Then you and Stole can wear it down.  He-”  Gurran nodded to me, “can finish it off.”

“Right.  [Aura].”  Dorothy muttered, almost to herself.

I frowned.

“There’s no need to draw its attention by yourself.  We should do what Dorothy said, hitting it with all we got.  If we hit it all at once, it might only take two or three moves to take it down.”

“I appreciate the input, from both of you.”  Gurran didn’t even bother looking at us.  “But that’s too risky.”

“Your plan is the risky one.”  I growled.  “It’s much better to kill it before it can start summoning its skeletons.”

He fixed me with a look.  “I did a background check on you.  You haven’t been an adventurer very long, but from what the rumors tell me, very talented.  We looked into you, you know; it’s not everyday we see a regular adventurer using [Aura].”

“I’m not being stubborn or trying to get into a spitting match with you, Lock.  I’m simply taking my place as the leader of this expedition, doing the right thing and choosing the safe strategy to kill this monster with.  I could care less what you say, you will see that I was right.”

Damn it.  Gurran… he believed everything he said.  He truly thought his way was right and there wasn’t an ounce of doubt in his eyes.  The worst thing was he wasn’t being malicious, he was trying to help me.

In history the most dangerous people are those who believed, from the bottom of their heart, that they were doing the right thing.  One might think that those people should be limited to politicians or war generals, those who shaped the course of history of our world.  But that wasn’t true.  People like these were everywhere.  Our friends, teachers, neighbors and coworkers.  

All living life, without doubt, that they were doing the right thing.

In MSS, that was deadly.

…Of course, I was the same.  But can you blame me? I played this game for 14 years.

Taking my silence as agreement, Gurran started the raid with a roar, charging the monster by himself.

“Ooooooorrrraaaaaaahhhhh!”

Click Click Clack Click

The monster had no voice.  Instead it snapped its beak, clattering the entire skeletal-structure of its head like false teeth.  The monster spread its arms, moving them about and waves of green and purple mana followed the path.  

｢ [Thần Trùng] casts [Wave of Pain] ｣

Mana surged forward with viscosity so thick that I almost mistook it for mud.  Gurran strode forward without fear, the top of his shield glowing with blue and the bottom part of his shield glowing red.  He was using [Magnet Shield] and absorbed all the [Wave of Pain], acting like a drain in a tub full of water.

Stole took her knee and began her Arbalest started to thump every few seconds, easing into rhythm.  Dorothy rode on her wolf, acting using her throwing weapons to harry the beast.  With our heavy artillery and mobile light-infantry, it wasn’t long before the monster was bleeding from a dozen different wounds.  Gurran was doing a good job of keeping the beast still, occasionally hitting it with [Lightning Cleave].

Darting in, I drew my sword.  I had to kill this thing, fast.

｢ Lock casts [Share the Load] ｣

The combination of Share the Load and Arcane Masochism went to work immediately, raising my Speed stat.  It really was nice not to rely on [Coin Toss] to land on a debuff for my opening move.

Right as my chain-and-manacle snapped around my wrist and the monster’s neck, Thần Trùng clacked its beaks together.  Then it began waving its arms up and down simultaneously while doing a series of steps similar to a jig.  The freshly turned soil heaved, skeletal hands reaching up from the ground with black mana drifting off of them like noxious gas.  Within seconds, we were surrounded by a dozen skeleton soldiers.

｢ [Thần Trùng] casts [Rise!] ｣

These monsters were technically not real, they wouldn’t even give EXP.  As one, they posed no problem.  But the real problem…

｢ [Skeleton] casts [Bone Explosion] ｣

…was the fact that they had only one skill and was programmed to use it immediately.

The one nearest Gurran –thankfully the tank– exploded.

Most people think that when something explodes, it’s like in the movies.  Nice and controlled, a slow mushroom cloud of fire rising up slowly and blowing everyone away to safety from the initial shockwave.  What really happens is different, especially if there’s magic involved.  

The Skeleton grew in size, its bones swelling up and bending, straining with so much tension that a painful creak at a decibel way too high caused me to wince in pain.  That was the first warning I got before the whole thing snapped, a horrible sound bone breaking and twisting, and tiny splinter pellets flew in all directions at roughly forty miles per hour.  Gurran put his shield in front and cast [Magnet Shield], absorbing the lion’s share of the explosion.

But he took too many of those bone fragments in a concentrated area, flying backwards like he got shot by a shotgun blast.

“Shara! Get to Gurran!”

Shara was already at Gurran’s side before I had snapped my order, white and green motes of light circling the two.  Even from where I was, she wasn’t too skilled; definitely not as talented as Clover had been.  She was struggling to heal him from a simple concussion or broken ribs or whatever he had.  The fucker couldn’t even take more than one [Bone Explosion] and stupidly took it all to himself.

At this moment, I missed Aurora dearly.  She could have covered us all behind her shield and only taken a fragment of the blast.

At least there were only eleven Skeletons.

“Stole! Shoot them down! Dorothy, with me!”  

With Stole’s [Bounce Shot], she could-

｢ [Thần Trùng] casts [Rise!] ｣

…Twenty three Skeletons left to deal with.

｢ [Thần Trùng] casts [Rise!] ｣

Then Thirty five.

｢ [Skeleton] casts [Bone Explosion] ｣

｢ [Skeleton] casts [Bone Explosion] ｣

｢ [Skeleton] casts [Bone Explosion] ｣

｢ [Skeleton] casts [Bone Explosion] ｣

…

｢ [Skeleton] casts [Bone Explosion] ｣

｢ [Skeleton] casts [Bone Explosion] ｣