novelzi 119- Ancient Hunters
119- Ancient Hunters
Vraxious—The Ravenous Grove
Vrax bounced on the balls of his feet as Stereos carefully and painstakingly laid out the scroll fully across the table. He weighed each edge down with a plain-looking piece of quartz and then finally fished a mana core from his robes.
He held it up for Vrax to see. “It’s a rather inexpensive one that I have a handful of for emergencies, but drawing mana from it like a well allows for me to smooth out some of the natural fluctuations that come in casting in a place as volatile as your Grove. You wouldn’t believe what having a shrine to an ancient god twenty strides away does to the eddies of magic.”
Vrax gathered himself slightly. “Stereos, thank you. I appreciate how challenging getting an ancient magical projection scroll to work must have been, but I’ll save you the time; any further explanations will one hundred percent go over my head.”
Stereos gave a slight sad sigh. “I appreciate the honesty. I truly do look forward to when some more classical magic practitioners move into the grove so I may engage in more theoretical...” Vrax cut him off.
“Stereos! Please the monsters!?”
“Yes, oh great one of little patience and shorter attention span, please bear with me while I bend the whims of chaotic magic to my will.” Stereos began slowly trailing crimson mana from the air around them; with one hand, the other drew a faint trickle of pure white unaligned mana from the mana core.
His hands drew up and crossed over one another, the trickles of mana weaving around one another slowly before cascading down onto the scroll below like a gentle waterfall of fog. “Now, as I postulated before, this is the record of Vurune trial takers. Is there anything specific you wish to see, as this document specifically contains over thirty magical impressions, and I do not think its spell structure would survive repeated viewings of all of them”
Vrax paced back and forth for a moment, thinking while Stereos’s magic gently suffused the page.
I really should use this as a way to pick my hunt target. If it was something good enough for ancient adherents of Vurune to hunt in an attempt at impressing the hell out of the boss, then it ought to be good enough that his holy beast won’t be disappointed and try to eat my dumbass.
Of course I would rather just explore and try and find something neat myself, but this really isn’t the time for that. I need to pass my trial, and I need to do it pretty damn quick. I'm strong, very fucking strong for my level. Hell, I can pretty much take on most first-tier paladins if I have enough of my creatures, but it’s a damned dangerous fight if they are anywhere near the second tier.
That’s where I am at level fifty; if I can pass the trial and power through to level seventy-five before we have our come-to-gods moment with the paladins, I bet I'll be strong enough to comfortably take on damn near any tier 1 paladin, and I'd even stand a chance against some of the early tier 2 commanders.
That brings me back again to what I should want to hunt... nothing that can fly; fuck that, that’s just asking for me to get my ass kicked. Big and slow is ideal, but without Torvald there to take the brunt of the monster, that could end up with me getting ragdolled. Honestly, something more balanced—big and deadly but not an utter behemoth—might be perfect.
Vrax finally stopped pacing and turned towards Stereos; he had a good idea at least of what kind of monster he didn’t want to fight. “Alright, I’m assuming you have already taken a peek at most of the scroll contents?”
Stereos lightly smiled. “I have only activated a few of the illusions as a test, but I have successfully translated most of the preceding text, yes.”
“Fantastic. Okay, nothing that flies, preferably nothing that can teleport, or I might get brutally murdered before my critters save me. And absolutely nothing that’s prominent form of fighting is just hiding far away and lobbing spells. And I don’t know if they have details on the level in there, but let’s try and aim for the high first tier at the very beginning of the second worst case.”
Vrax felt his nerves causing his stomach to squirm as Stereos painstakingly went from entry to entry, taking notes on a small scrap of parchment to the side the entire while still slowly teasing mana into the page. His eyebrows rose a few times as he took notes, and at one point he even scoffed and lightly shook his head. A rather dramatic gesture by Stereos’s standards when he was in his research mode.
He finally reached the last entry on the page, seeming to reread it at least three times with furrowed brows before slowly writing one last note down with a definitive swish of his quill. “There appear to be three out of nearly thirty on here that I believe loosely fit your criteria. Quite a few were simply out of the desired level range in one direction or another. How would you like me to list them?”
Vrax leaned in, staring at the scroll, willing himself to be able to read the damnable ancient script. “Uhh, how about the lowest level first? Save the real mean bastards for last.”
“As you wish, I would like to preface that while I agree with using this as an information-gathering tool, I think choosing your trial quarry based on a thousand-year-old scroll that is more a chronicle of how initiates died than of successful hunts. Is not helpful for your continued existence.”
“Yeah, I might get eaten; that’s kind of a given.” Vrax shrugged and gestured at the scroll.
“Probably, probably will get eaten.” Stereos corrected him before tracing both hands in a sharp-angled motion that focused the loose threads of mana into a fine spear of intent that swept down to just caress the surface of one of the pictographs.
Stereos cleared his throat and then began reading from the scroll entry. “Wellond Helixate on the third moon stalked a Gloamlurker that had been preying upon shipping lanes in the marsh reaches. The beast was slain using a mix of traps and archery; the initiate has brought back a trophy as proof of his deed of valor. Wellond is hereby granted the rank of Hunter, and his trophy shall be added to the Great Feast Fathers Hall. The beast’s soul was recorded by the root whisperer’s amulet he wore as being of the first tier of ascendancy and the seventy-seventh level.” Stereos added one last push of mana into the scroll, and an illusion bloomed to life in the room.
A wretched being sprung to life above the table. It was shaped like a starved man with exposed ribs and a caved-in chest. Long arms jutted from its shoulders, ending in clawed three-fingered hands. A second set of scything limbs twitched hungrily on its back, occasionally prodding out like the arm of a mantis. The creature's face was a twisted mix between a human and a canines snout filled with pointed fangs but carrying an unmistakable glimmer of intelligence.
The vision showed the beast leaping through dense foliage before lunging forward and bisecting a deer in a shower of gore with one of its bladed limbs. Its next step forward saw it caught mercilessly in a rope trap that sprung from seemingly nowhere. Looping around its leg and yanking sideways with a bladed lasso that sheared its leg straight off and out of the illusion.
While it screamed on the ground, arrow after arrow landed into its immobile form. Each blooming with a small shower of bloodred flowers that slowly entombed it in a thorny prison. After the seventh arrow landed, the beast went still, and a graceful figure dropped from above to plant one more arrow straight between its eyes and make sure it stayed down.
Vrax let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. “Well, that one didn’t seem that bad at all—freaky fast but very killable.”
Stereos gesture back at the illusion, “It is not completed.”
The beast that was seemingly dead twitched within its tomb of thorns, suddenly lashing all around itself in a rending flurry. The graceful figure dove to the side, sinking arrow after arrow into the beast as it slowly rose to its feet again, sickeningly shedding its skin to escape the thorns; a limb devoid of flesh shot from the stub where its leg once was.
The figure fished a glimmering arrow from there quiver and sidestepped sharply with a flash of mana that seemed to displace them far farther than should have been possible. The Gloamlurker landed skinless and flailing in the spot the archer had just been; dozens more appendages were tearing free from its flesh, turning it into an indistinct swarm of bladed limbs that twitched back towards the archer.
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A single arrow flashed out, and the illusion went red-white as the beast was engulfed in a magical column of fire, pinning it in place with the sheer downward force of the flame's breath. The archer never relented, showering arrow after arrow into the flailing tangle of blades and hate, occasionally loosing another elementally imbued arrow that would detonate in fire or ice and, in one case, a single lightning strike. After nearly another ten heartbeats of endless barrage, the twitching, smoldering husk faded from sight.
Vrax’s eyes were wide in awe. “Oh, okay, so freaky, terrifyingly fast, and damn near immortal, got it. That one can go into the maybe category.
Stereos sighed and browsed upwards through the lines of the scroll to find the next entry to read for Vrax.
I could kill that; it would be a dangerous fight, and with how fucking fast it is, I would have to lure it somewhere with an ungodly number of retriever hives planted, or fair odds are the thing guts me after getting past Sunshine or Duchess.
Stereos found the entry he was looking for and began reading with obvious concern on his face: “Dractus has fallen in an attempt at gaining the rank of stalker. He hunted a Blood Drake to the edges of its lair and was cut down after a valiant struggle. His amulet has recorded his deeds of bravery.”
Blood drake? What the hell is that? I thought I had a pretty damn extensive grasp on drakes in this region; God knows I've read every bestiary I could get my hands on. To be fair, Duchess is a kind of Drake I didn’t know about so really what the fuck do I know.
The illusion slowly glimmered to light above the table; it depicted a short valley floor within a jungle, and purple wisteria trailed down the stony walls highlighted by small rivers of blood dripping from somewhere above. The valley floor was covered in ancient bones and a few large boulders. Crimson trees rose up, trying to touch the light above.
Something shifted within the boughs of the tree, causing the entire stout trunk to bend slightly as it effortlessly slipped to the ground. And rose up to its full height. Its four eyes trained on exactly where a hidden figure was, sword in hand, at the base of a tree.
The blood drake was magnificent and unsettling. Its body was covered in thick angled scales that looked like a hunk of obsidian; they shifted with its every step, pulled tight over nearly bulging muscles. The creature's body was shaped like a strange mix between the powerful frame of a canine and the predatory grace of a mountain lion. The eyes were set above a long, draconic snout that split open into three segments along the bottom as it rose, showing off tens of thousands of fine, backward-curving fangs.
The most shocking feature about it was the constant stream of blood flowing like tiny rivers down its scales and dripping onto the ground below it, only to slowly rise again and swirl around the beast before trickling down its scales once again.
The hidden figure realized he was exposed and rushed forward towards the Drake before it could strike. The ground around him rose up as he charged, and the trees reached down in a damp shower of mana and morphing branches. By the time he had crossed half the distance, he had been wrapped in a hulking suit of armor that looked like it was crudely hewn from the nearby life.
He stood nearly eye-to-eye with the cart-sized beast encased in his formidable armor, a hammer that seemed to simply be a gnarled branch clutched tight in his hands. The man lashed forward, the grass rising up like a wave to push him onward, his hammer raised high for a devastating strike.
The blood drake snorted and dashed straight forwards, a shimmering fog of blood droplets following it as it went. The man’s hammer crashed down with the colossal force of nature straight into the cloud of blood and stuck fast as the cloud solidified around the hammer and then sensuously wrapped around the handle and upward onto his arms.
The blood drake reared up slightly and lashed out, lunging with its devastating maw straight for the trapped warrior’s throat. It shook side to side viciously, tearing wood and leaves free, trying to dig through the armor and get at the man beneath.
The man threw himself in a shower of branches free from the back of his armor and whirled back towards the occupied monster hand extended for a devastating spell. He stopped, his eyes alight with horror, as he realized the monster's eyes were still trained straight on him, and all around him were thousands of droplets of blood hovering at every angle he could have hoped to escape to. The droplets congealed and speared out straight through his forehead in a blinding flash of mana before he could even blink. He fell like a marionette, a lance of solidified blood jutting from his skull. The illusion ended.
For once Stereos looked more shocked than Vrax; he even took half a step towards the fading illusion, hand outstretched like he had just been given a glimpse of a beautiful future. Vrax looked over in amusement, happy to see for once he wasn’t the only one almost overwhelmed with the sheer magnificence of a monster.
Vrax prodded Stereos. “So, uhh...really deadly blood mage, with a concerningly high intelligence...it’s like the monster version of you!”
Stereos shook his head almost in a daze. “You, you don’t understand Vrax—the skill, the sheer intimate beauty of how he molded the blood around himself. It was nothing short of artistry.”
“Alright buddy, when I hit second tier, if I can manage it, I’ll get you a blood puppy; you guys can do the terrifying spellcasting stuff together.” Vrax said jokingly.
Stereos looked at him very seriously. “Is that really a possibility?” Vrax took half a step back; it was by far the most excited he had ever seen the unflappable mage.
“Yeah, guess so...so how powerful was that thing? It looked like a rough fight but again doable. Don’t love that it seemed smarter than the damn hunter, but that’s weirdly common out here.”
Stereos looked at the page again. “The record shows it as an adult blood drake of the ninety-eighty level.”
All right, so that one could be a coin flip; if it was similar to that example, I could manage with enough preparation, maybe. If I have shit luck and hunt one that has advanced to the second tier, I would be getting wrung out like a dishtowel unless a miracle happened. The capstone skills you get when you advance to the second tier are no joke.
Vrax gestured for Stereos to show the last example. Stereos gathered himself from whatever dark, bloody daydream he was having and began suffusing mana into the last pictogram. “I would preface this by saying you absolutely shouldn’t hunt this one; in fact, I don’t think you should even disturb it.”
Vrax raised his eyebrows in interest. He was already excited to find out what the next monster was; now he was fucking fascinated.
With a slow, even voice, Stereos began reading the new entry: “Luminos Mycelos, Paladin of the Grove, has been slain in his attempt to prove that he was worthy of the mantle of champion.” Stereos stopped for a few heartbeats and let that sink in. This was how a previous Vrax, or at least someone as crazy as him, had died.
“Luminos successfully tracked down the den of an unknown creature that was preying upon Grove initiates on their first hunts. All that was known before this encounter was that the creature favored prey rich in Essence, only attacking those of the twenty-fifth level or higher. It showed no interest in unclassed or low-level villagers in the neighboring area. The sites of the attacks were scoured clean of life in a way that couldn’t be explained by Grove druids or shamans. And so far there were no survivors of attacks or witnesses.” Stereos paused to take a long breath and channel the last bit of mana needed to bring the illusion to life.
The scene that played ahead of them showed a great depression in the earth slowly sweeping into a cave entrance. The entire depression was the most vivid, healthy green moss imaginable, nearly half a stride deep, with a rainbow of bushes and piercingly orange flowers peeking from beneath the dense carpet. The man in the illusion slowly inched through the moss; it reached nearly his head as he crept forward, low enough to be touching the ground with his fingertips.
The moss parted before him with the slightest rippling effect as if his presence turned it to water. His form was mostly obscured beneath a regal-looking robe of a green weave that matched the deepest forest shadows. He paused suddenly as something shifted ahead, and an entire patch of the ground before the cave entrance swayed slightly.
He reached his hand forward, lightning-like crackles of green mana dancing into the air; each bolt that left his fingertips turned into an ethereal, featureless moth that fluttered towards the disturbance. They disappeared midair suddenly into wisps of mana blowing away with the breeze. The man looked confused, pulling a long, thin sword forward in front of himself defensively.
A patch of the moss a mere handspan from himself Opened a massive slitted eye of the darkest piercing green. He whirled towards it, blade extended, mana billowing from him as some grand skill activated. Then suddenly he fell into two halves roughly before the slitted eye, an unseen bladed tail shimmering invisibly behind him, only the outline of it visible due to his dripping blood.
The Illusion faltered suddenly, and stereos quickly read the rest of the entry: “Luminos’s body was recovered in the suspected lair of an unknown pseudodragon or wyvern of some kind. The beast had moved on, but the lair contained the remnants of other initiates as well as the fragments of broken eggs. The recording from Luminos’s amulet suggested the beast was on the cusp of the second tier.” Stereos slowly rolled the scroll closed again and let out a long sigh of relief as he finally let his mana channeling stop.
Vrax stared into the space that held the last illusion for a concerningly long time until eventually Stereos spoke up, “Vrax, please don’t. I started that one with a warning for a reason.”
Vrax turned halfway toward the stereos, his eyes focused elsewhere, deep in thought. “That, uhhh, was that fucking plant dragon? Like, a can turn invisible moss dragon or drake? That’s fucking amazing.” Vrax started pacing back and forth, weighing the pros and cons of the last creature.
“Yes, it appeared that way. It also is the creature that killed an ancient one of your predecessors, and we have utterly no real knowledge of it.” Stereos watched Vrax pace back and forth, already talking to himself about ways to counter camouflage, and just shook his head. “Just don’t die. I’m going to hold you to that promise for one of those Blood Drakes. Continue your trial preparations; I will delve into the other records and search for hints as to where we might find any of these prospects.”
Vrax nodded thankfully towards Stereos.
Those are all absolutely fascinating creatures, any of which might be enough to appease the holy beast. As excited as I am about them, especially whatever the sneaky bastard in the moss was, it’s irrelevant if the stereos doesn’t find more clues to go off of. Those are nearly thousand-year-old recordings, probably from just before or after the fall of Elysium.
For now I should focus on preparations. I need to have my menagerie perfectly packed for the hunt, and I need to choose my second Apex Guardian.