Drip-Fed - The Hunt 5 (Patreon)

“I understand,” Aclysia nodded and the explanations concluded. “It is good to be up to date, although I did expect your spell list to be a bit longer, Reysha.”

“I’m a fighter, not a caster,” the tiger girl shrugged. “The things I’m good enough at to mention are mostly skills, like throwing knives, not magical things.”

That made sense as far as Apexus was concerned. The slime had quietly sat aside the entire thing, having nothing to add. Most special abilities he possessed, pheromones aside, were plainly visible in their origin and those two knew it all well enough. By the end of the discussion, he had replenished his biomass, however.

“What we do now?” the slime asked.

“What do we do now,” Aclysia corrected him and, if Apexus could have, he would have blushed at that stupid a mistake. Instead, his elliptic shape turned a bit blocky from the embarrassment, gaining some harder corners. “Don’t feel bad, darling, you are improving steadily.” That, in turn, made the slime tower with pride. “I want to ask about that arrow again, if you don’t mind,” she answered the initial question.

Apexus didn’t, so he quickly broke down the situation again in all details he remembered. Describing the scrawny looking man to the very sudden pain and his flight afterwards. “It was the light of your ascendance that saved me there,” the slime ended.

“Does this description ring any bells with you, Reysha?” Aclysia asked the tiger girl.

Of the group, she was the likeliest to have ever met such a man. A person of that power was very likely to have served as an instructor in the Adventurer’s Guild. However, she just shook her head and licked some more blood of her lips. “Nothing, so- No, wait a fucking second,” the Rogue had a sudden epiphany. “That motherfucker – Dumbass pointy head, right?”

“Triangle shaped,” Apexus affirmed.

“Yes, saw that guy, he was out and about searching for us. I tracked him to see if he was a threat, but he gave up after just one evening,” the tiger girl gnawed on the thumb claw of her left hand. “Did he notice me? Was that why he stopped going out?”

That theory made some amount of sense, but it opened up other questions. “Why wouldn’t he take you hostage then?” Aclysia asked, “To force us to look for you?”

That was a question none of them had a satisfying answer to. They were stuck between two equally odd possibilities. Number one, the archer had not sensed Reysha at all and that tracking attempt had been simply half-hearted. That begged the question of why the guy came out there in the first place and why he then tried to shoot down Apexus with such fervour. Number two, the hunter was way too lazy to actually commit to taking a hostage and bait Apexus out. Very odd, in the eyes of the entire group, but the more likely of the two, given the strength of the arrow.

“To be able to shoot an arrow straight through your body… I would assume him no lower than level thirty,” Aclysia presented her best guess. “At worst level fifty. Although that seems like a stretch.”

“Yeah, I don’t think a level fifty or higher would miss that shot,” Reysha backed the metal fairy up. Apexus had no sense of scale on that matter, he knew that Hemle had been around level twenty and Apotho had been probably several times that, judging by everything he had been capable of doing. He had never really seen either of them fight, so he just had to trust the two of them and their estimates.

Aclysia hummed to herself, “Do we have to worry about Hunter’s Mark?”

“Hunter’s Mark?” Apexus asked.

“It is a renowned tracking spell, like half the reason to get a Hunter into your group,” Reysha let him know. Like Sneak and its many upgrades for Rogues, Bolt for mages and the particular healing spells of the supporting classes, Hunter’s Mark was rather famous. Sure, there were other Classes that had access to location tracking, but none of them were as accurate, making it famous despite being a bit harder to learn than those basic spells. “But it shouldn’t work at this distance, we should be more worried about Mehily and her lot.”

“…Right…” Aclysia agreed slowly. The Inquisition was the one force they couldn’t bet on forgetting them no matter how much time passed. Didn’t help that they would be able to reach this dungeon eventually. Reason for the metal fairy’s hesitation was, however, that she was forced to echo a course of action she had previously stopped. “They will come here. It won’t take them long to realize we’re in this dungeon either. If we run into them again, using lethal force will be necessary.”

“Yup,” was all that Reysha had to comment on the matter.

“Are you… not going to scold me for getting us into this situation?”

“Nah, I did that before and you’re just going to give me some moral justification, aren’t you?” the tiger girl put her bloody hands together like a nun in prayer. “Those faithful souls have made their choice despite knowing what awaits them in pursuit of my beloved’s life,” she spoke in a mockingly melodic voice. “As much as it pains me, we cannot let them escape again.”

“Insulting… but accurate,” Aclysia conceded. Even her disdain for murder had to take a step back when confronted with certain situations. Having a trio of people able to roughly estimate their position from a world over, highly motivated to either kill or imprison and then kill her darling, was such a situation. “I am nevertheless sorry for our current predicament.”

“I made the choice,” Apexus reminded her.

“You wouldn’t have, were it not for your love for me, Apexus,” the metal fairy refused his attempt to share the blame. “I hoped it would make them realize that you were more than a monster and that they, at the very least, would give up their pursuit. I let my wish for peace and the best outcome hinder what was the easiest and most reliable way forwards.” After a few more moments, she added. “And I find myself unable to promise that I won’t act on these ideals again.”

The slime gave her something approximating a hug by flowing up to her and then wrapping himself around her up to the bust. “It’s okay, you don’t need to,” he assured. “Knowing where it led us is a bad way to measure our decision back then. Hindsight is made with a new pair of better eyes. In that moment, I supported your decision, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it.”

“Thank you, darling,” Aclysia put her arms around his liquid form and the two of them just stood there in tranquillity for a few moments. Then Reysha had to be Reysha and jumped into the hug with her crimson stained smile. For some reason, the metal fairy didn’t really mind it.

“In the root’s name, you two are overthinking this,” the tiger girl laughed. “We’ll just deal with this shit as it comes. We might not even have to kill Mehily anyway.”

“No?” Aclysia asked and then realized what she was getting at. “Right, those three are normal humans. Even if they come here, they will have to leave once their rations run out.”

“While we can stay down here for as long as we want,” Reysha grinned. “Our senses are finer as well, so we can avoid them should they ever come even close.”

“And they only know the direction in which to go, not our exact location…” now that she was no longer hung up on her guilty conscience, Aclysia’s mind was working on the situation at large. “It is likely they will first hit the ocean before realizing we have fled all the way up here. It will take them at least another week to get here. That is, if they hunt rather than buy their meals.”

“They might just camp the outside instead,” Apexus informed them about what he would do in their stead.

“Would that change our strategy in any way?” Reysha asked, unnecessarily rubbing the side of her face against Apexus in what was an equally spontaneous and affectionate gesture. She would have done the same for Aclysia, but the metal fairy would have cried about the dirt that got on her face in the process.

“It means we shouldn’t leave before we’re certain… Right, we should defeat the boss before they arrive,” Aclysia pointed out. “Defeating it will leave us with no other option than to be ejected through the fountain.”

“Plan is set then… do you remember the way?” Apexus asked.

That was a very good question.