Chương 9: Chater 9 - Taunt

Alex woke well before sunrise, the camp around him still mostly dark and quiet. He lay there for a minute, hammer resting against the inside of the tent, turning over the same thought that had kept circling since his dad shut the conversation down the night before. He didn't fully disagree with the caution. He understood it, even respected it.

But understanding it didn't make the itch go away, the sense that every day spent waiting for permission was a day the next wave got that much closer without them being ready for it. He decided before he'd even finished lacing his boots. He was going into that dungeon, today, alone, and he wasn't going to ask first. Before heading for the gate, Alex pulled up the shop one more time.

He'd earned a handful of points off yesterday's warthog kill and whatever scraps came from the rest of the scouting trip, sixteen total once it all settled, and after turning the number over for a minute, he decided to spend some of it on something other than another set of javelins. His hammer had done its job so far, but the more Alex thought about it, the less attached to it he actually felt.

Good for crushing, bad for anything that needed reach or precision, and against another wave of fast, low snakes, reach sounded like exactly what he wanted. He found a Common-rank spear in the Equipment section for ten points and bought it without much more deliberation than that. It materialized in his hands a moment later, and Alex turned it over once, testing the balance.

Lighter than the hammer by a wide margin, the haft long enough to keep something at arm's length before it ever got close enough to bite, the head narrow and double-edged, good for both stabbing and slashing in a way his hammer had never been built for. He ran through a few practice thrusts in the open space behind his tent and felt something click into place almost immediately. Well-balanced, responsive, exactly the kind of tool that rewarded precision over raw force.

Six points left in his pocket, but he figured that trade was worth it if it meant fewer close calls today. The sun hadn't fully cleared the horizon yet when he reached the gate. Whoever had pulled watch duty that night gave him a tired nod and didn't ask many questions, too early and too exhausted to think twice about one armed family member heading out before breakfast.

Alex felt a flicker of nerves as he approached the dungeon entrance, the same gray, depthless circle they'd all watched the first wave pour out of, but he pushed past it. He knew what he wanted to become. Nothing about waiting around for someone else's permission was going to get him there any faster. He stepped through.

The inside opened into a wide stretch of green, open field grass and loose, uneven dirt underfoot, solid enough to walk without much trouble but soft in patches, the kind of ground that asked for a little more attention than the field outside had. He hadn't gone more than thirty seconds before he ran into his first real opposition. Five Tainted Pythons, each one tagged level 2 by Identify, eyes glowing that same unnatural red he'd already gotten used to seeing.

This many of them at once, all at this level, wasn't anything new. He'd killed plenty just like this during the first wave. The real test was doing it without anyone covering his back this time. He closed the distance fast, javelin already leaving his hand before the snakes had fully reacted to him. It caught the lead one square in the body, pinning it briefly to the dirt as the rest scattered into a loose, hissing half-circle around him.

Alex brought the spear up and settled into a low guard, watching the nearest one coil to strike. The first one lunged, and Alex met it with a clean thrust through the head before it ever got close enough to land a bite. The damage alone was enough to drop it outright, no need to burn mana on something this far below him.

He pivoted, drove the spear's edge across the throat of the second one as it tried to circle around his flank, and kept moving, stabbing and cutting in smooth, unbroken motions that the hammer had never let him manage. By the time the last one went down, Alex hadn't taken a single hit. He kept moving deeper.

The dungeon's population didn't seem to thin no matter how many he put down, more snakes always sliding into view from somewhere just out of sight, the space clearly bigger and more thoroughly stocked than the open field outside had ever suggested. After roughly ten more of these smaller, scattered encounters, all of them falling about as easily as the first group had, Alex came around a low rise in the terrain and found two level 5 Tainted Pythons coiled together, watching him with those same glowing red eyes.

He stopped well short of them, weighing the decision honestly for once instead of letting pride answer for him. He'd taken one level 5 down solo during the first wave, but that had cost him nearly everything he had and left him bleeding badly enough that Ace had needed several minutes to patch him up. Two at once, with nobody around to back him up if it went wrong, was a different kind of math entirely. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Some part of him, the part that had never quite learned to back down once a fight felt personal, argued that he could handle it anyway. He let that part talk for a second, then decided to be smarter about it instead of just charging in blind. He backed off out of their line of sight and pulled a javelin from the bundle at his hip, turning an idea over in his head that he genuinely wasn't sure would work.

Power Strike had always been a weapon skill in his mind, mana fed directly into whatever was already in his grip. He'd never actually tried using it on something meant to leave his hand entirely. Only one way to find out. He focused the skill the way he normally would, except instead of channeling it into the spear, he pushed it into the javelin balanced in his palm, then threw.

The throw landed wrong on his first two attempts, the mana bleeding out of the javelin awkwardly, more wasted than applied, like trying to pour water into a cup that kept tipping over. He adjusted his grip and his focus on the third try, holding the mana steady right up until the moment of release instead of trying to maintain it through the throw itself.

That one flew true, and when it struck the nearest level 5 python in the flank, the wound it left was deeper and far more vicious than any javelin had managed before, dark blood welling up immediately around the buried head. It worked. Mana clearly carried through to a thrown weapon the same way it did through a held one, as long as he timed the release correctly.

That was worth knowing, and worth remembering for next time, since peeling damage off a target from a safe distance before it ever closed the gap sounded like exactly the kind of advantage he didn't want to forget he had. He tried the technique twice more on the same snake from a distance, refining his timing each time, before deciding he'd used up enough javelins to make the point. Six left in total, and he wasn't about to burn through all of them on practice.

He pulled back, gave himself a few minutes to rest and let some mana trickle back, and only then moved in to actually finish the fight. A familiar chime sounded as he caught his breath. [Level up. Level 3.] [Skill selection available.] [Shield Bash (Common). Taunt (Common). Charge (Common).] Alex looked over the options without much enthusiasm for two of the three.

Shield Bash didn't interest him much, not without an actual shield in hand right now, and Charge felt like something better suited to someone who needed to close distance fast, which had never really been his problem. Taunt, though, stuck with him. He thought about the rest of the family back at camp, most of them still sitting at level 1, untested and unready for whatever the next wave actually brought.

If things ever got bad enough that someone weaker needed cover, being able to pull every set of monster eyes onto himself instead might be the difference between someone he loved getting hurt and someone he loved walking away clean. He picked Taunt. [Taunt (Common). Let out a battle cry that forces nearby enemies to focus their attacks on you.] He put his one remaining free stat point into Wisdom, hoping a slightly faster mana recovery might pay off sooner rather than later, then took a few minutes more to actually rest before turning back toward the two level 5 snakes waiting on him. When he was ready, he circled around to get a clean angle and triggered Power Strike directly into the spear this time, mana wrapping the blade in a faint, humming light.

He focused everything on accuracy rather than force, and the thrust landed exactly where he wanted it, driving deep into the side of the snake he'd already wounded with the javelin. It let out something close to a shriek, thrashing hard enough that the javelin still buried in its flank tore halfway free, but the strike had done its job. That one was out of the fight, even if it wasn't dead yet.

The second snake reacted instantly, its head flaring wide the same way the python from the first wave had, fangs the length of kitchen knives lunging for him without warning. Alex hadn't activated Reinforce Body yet, too focused on finishing the first snake, and the mistake cost him. The impact sent him stumbling back several steps despite his shield catching most of it, his arm aching from the force alone.

He recovered fast, planting his feet and watching the wounded snake behind him recover slowly, clearly not done yet but not an immediate threat either. He didn't want to give either one of them more time to reset. Triggering Reinforce Body properly this time, he charged the active snake head-on, meeting its lunging head with a controlled thrust that caught it across the jaw, the spear's edge biting deep enough to draw a real wound.

The snake answered with a whipping strike from its tail that Alex only partially blocked with his shield, the force still enough to send him skidding back a step. He held his ground anyway, watching the wound he'd already opened, and decided not to give it the chance to recover any further. Another Power Strike, channeled straight through the spear this time without hesitation, drove into the side of its open mouth, and Alex finished it with a javelin straight through its eye, dropping it for good.

That left the first one, still wounded, still trying to drag itself toward him despite everything. Alex didn't waste any more time on it than he had to. One clean thrust with the spear he'd already pulled free from the last kill, straight through the skull, and it finally went still. He stood there for a moment afterward, breathing hard, more drained than hurt. A few bruises, a sore arm from that first hit, nothing that felt like it had done any real damage underneath the surface.

Still, he knew he'd swing by Ace's tent before doing anything else once he got back, just to be safe. Two days of fighting back to back had a way of adding up in ways that weren't always obvious right away, and he wasn't about to assume his body had escaped all of it clean. He turned and made his way back toward the entrance, already running through how he was going to explain this to his dad who would have definitely found out about his missing son.