Chapter 109

“This shouldn’t take long.”

Without pause he turned and grabbed hold of a squawking Lyra, his paw wrapping around her waist. In one motion he slipped over the side of the construction and crashed down to the forest floor below, feet sinking inches into the earth, the loot construction behind rattling as the ground trembled under the impact

He smoothly leveraged his momentum by leaning into his weight and bounded forward, racing into the trees, leaves flying up around him. It didn’t take long for his improved hearing to pick up the sounds of something out of place in the quiet forest and he adjusted his direction.

Without carrying the many tons of the Orc clan’s wealth on his shoulders he could actually use the immense speed being long legged and overwhelmingly strong allowed and he tore through the trees so fast that a cloud of leaves and twigs was continuously exploding around his body. His pace meant it took only a half hour to near the source, screeching and roaring, the sound of animalistic monsters.

The destination flickered through the trees and he picked out the sight of stone, grey stone, a clearing, and more importantly, caves, caves at the far side of a clearing amongst the trees.

At the center of the clearing a half dead stag bellowed and bleated mindlessly. Its haunches dragging across the ground as a giant brown bear bit into its guts. At least, it appeared as a bear at first glance. The forest of meter long spines clustered over its back and neck, and the second set of triangular teeth behind its first set, and its long furred otter-like tail said otherwise, not to mention its pink-red slitted eyes.

The sharp sound of bone shattering filled the clearing as the monster bit through the stag’s spine. The whip crack crunch was like a starting signal and a massive blur of black shot from the treeline and crashed into the bear like an out of control freighting wagon running down hill.

The bear like monster was ripped away from happily eating the stag alive and sent tumbling, massive black furred arms wrapping around it as they rolled once twice, then a pair of feet dug into the earth, tearing up the ground spray of earth and grass, a ferocious snarl ripping from a pair of wolf teeth as paws found the bear like monsters arms and head, holding the monsters arms behind as the other paw gripped its head holding it in place, the long spines protruding from the bear like monster’s back doing nothing, simply snapping against Rain’s front, scattering to the grass as they broke and splintered, unable to pierce his skin.

In a moment Rain had locked it in place, on its knees, head wrenched up and throat fully exposed.

“Now Lyra! Do it now!”

The air flickered and then Lyra materialised out of thin air. She held a black knife in both hands, arms shaking wildly, sharp tip wavering through the air as she shook and trembled, breath coming in hiccuped gasps, eyes round and scared.

“Kill the thing Lyra, cut its throat! Do it!” Rain roared causing her to flinch in fright.

Panicking now, she stumbled forward, knife aiming for the thrashing monster, its neck jerking side to side as it snarled and roared trying its utmost to escape Rain’s grip.

The blade missed, glanced off Rain’s claw, and then it sunk deep into the monster, the blade slipping into its throat with ease, the strange blade almost eagerly seeking to end the monster’s life.

The monster froze and blood burbled from around the wound.

Rain waited, checking it had truly died, and then, assured it had, he released it. The monster slumped to the ground limp, its body eerily still in death.

“Are you okay?”

Lyra stared at her trembling hands and then let out a long steadying breath.

“Yes, I just, it’s ... really really intense ... and I have not had a very good time f-fighting lately, I feel ... I felt unsafe. I couldn’t do anything, just panicking all the time, and then to just kill such a scary strong monster so- so- ... I didn’t know if I could...”

“I understand, being a Class that isn’t about fighting is difficult, not being strong on your own is difficult, I knew that too well as a low leveler, and then surrounded by the strong ... The council, the Ranker, the Orcs.”

“I ... can be called a low leveler too. With a Class like mine even being level fifteen isn’t much help. In others eyes I may as well be really really low level since I’m not a fighter. I’m ... not happy about that, In Florens I was looked down on, nobody wants or likes a weak Class because it makes life so much harder.”

Rain nodded. “Your Class is good, they’re obsession with power blinds them to that. What you could become once leveled...” He turned and stared at the crowd of bear like monsters that were gathering at the entrance to the caves, two dozen, more. “But this won’t be easy, you’re going to need to dart in fast then escape unnoticed. You think you can do it?”

Lyra swallowed then steadied her shaky legs. She lifted a hand and the black knife materialised in it, her fingers wrapping tight around the hilt.

“Yes. Just, take care.”

Rain didn’t reply but suddenly lunged forward, the nearest bear like monster which had been creeping closer taken by surprise. In moments it was spun around and held down, Rain’s weight pinning it, a paw under its chin holding its throat up and exposed.

The monsters behind roared in outrage and lunged for his back, a wave of heavy muscle and brutal claws crashing down, the brutal thump thump thump of flesh against flesh, claws raking, tearing.

Rain remained implacable, not even bothering to turn his head as the sharp claws tried to rend him to pieces and utterly failed to even mark his flesh. The monsters weren’t even strong enough to shift him as he held the bear monster he had taken in place.

A flash of fluff and a knife slice followed by the fluff vanishing once more and then the bear was dead, slumping in Rain’s paws.

He turned and took hold of the next one.

The last bear like monster died and an exhausted Lyra flopped to the grass.

She watched as Rain picked up the monster and tossed it, adding to the hill of the things. It had turned out that the first two dozen was not the total of all the monsters, the caves they had come from were apparently some kind of large warren and by the end Rain had held down nearly fifty of the things for Lyra to kill.

She had leveled twice.

Which, looking over the sheer number of the powerful monsters piled up high, was maybe a little disappointing. She wasn’t sure how she would have managed to do such a thing without help, having to kill a staggering amount of weaker monsters she supposed, it was no wonder non-combat Classes tended to languish at the lower levels.

She eyed Rain. He was ... very strong now, easily equivalent to some high leveler or other. Yet, a high leveler would never ever help a low leveler like herself to level, in some ways it was a very unique leveling opportunity.

Now that the excitement was over, and she had a chance to breathe, she brought to mind the visualisation of her Classes information, the way that things she needed to know about her Class were displayed to her.

An obnoxiously bright pink floral notebook decorated with flowers and hearts appeared in her mind’s eye. The book flipped open and revealed a fresh page. After a moment pink inked writing started to appear, which was a little hard to see as the pink ink was on pink paper. The invisible pen wrote out her name, her species, her new level, her Skills, including her strongest Skill, her invisibility, written as [Unseen Safety] here as well as her climbing Skill.

The invisible pen came to a halt having written out no new Skills, in fact she hadn’t gained anything new at all, apart from her level number 15 ticking up to 17.