Chương 8: Nocturnal Assault

I feel like I have to tell others about it, but I don't want to interrupt their sleep. I'll give them a chance one at a time, I guess. When my shift is over, I'll wake up Gigi and explain to her that there are new monsters out and about. But I want to go hunt them. If she doesn't want to come as well, she can stay and guard and I'll go out by myself. If she does want to come, we'll wake up Ashley, since she's next in line, and we'll go from there.

I'd really rather go out with someone, as I'm a much more efficient fighter when I have an ally to flank someone. But even if she says now, I can still go out myself. I'll get that first strong hit, and that might be enough to make sure I'll win the fight. I can go far by myself, and maybe improve my stealth or my tracking while I'm at it, finding single monsters to kill while avoiding any larger groups. First, though, I need to finish reading this book.

I skipped over the basics at the beginning; they're the same as they were in the other book. I can feel the magic. I can find it and I can direct it. All I need to know is how to direct it. So I skip ahead to that section and focus on the mana covering my skin, hardening there to deflect weapons and spells and anything that tries to pierce through the shell of mana that I imagine. You have learned the spell: Shell. Common defensive spell 1/5. MP cost: 10. Casting time: instant.

Duration: until dispelled or defeated. Cooldown: 5 minutes. Create armor around your body that absorbs 100% of incoming damage and has a capacity equal to 20% of your total HP. I immediately cast the spell, to make sure it doesn't interfere with my vision or my movement or anything. But no, there's just a quick flash of light over my whole body, and then it fades away to invisibility. I can't see it, but I know it's there, and I know it will absorb 21 points of damage before allowing any actual harm to come to me.

I can hardly wait the rest of the hour that I agreed to wait before waking Gigi up.

"The monsters are different," I tell her as I wake her up. She wipes off her eyes and gets to her feet. She may not have been that deeply asleep, as she comes awake pretty easily.

"What do you mean, different?" I take her to the front of the store and show her what I mean. Before the night fully fell, there would be the occasional lynxith wandering by. But the thing crawling around there isn't feline. It's canine. Shadow wolf. Basic rare monster, level 6. HP: 300/300.

"See?" I say. I'm rethinking my plan. I'm not sure I can kill something with three hundred hit points by myself, even if I do get the drop on it for the first attack. I may need Gigi and her skill with the shield to be able to take this thing out, and then I'll have to teach her to be more stealthy so we can avoid any friends he might have.

"You think we should go out and fight?" Gigi asks me.

"What about the others?"

"We can wake them up and see what they think," I say.

"But if people want to sleep, I'm cool just going out the two of us. Or alone, if need be. But the monsters are different. They have more hit points, which makes me think they're worth more experience, and are more likely to have treasure." Turns out, no one wants sleep more than they want to fight new monsters. Everyone agrees with my assessment about them being worth more experience, and all agree that they'd rather fight through the night.

Vinny especially wants to try his new spells and to get to another level so he can officially become a mage. We head out and find one of the shadow wolves stalking around by itself and move to surround it. It snarls as it sees us move towards it, and it lets out a howl. The way I figure it, we have a limited amount of time now before other shadow wolves come and answer the call of this one. We have to kill it quickly and then either run the hell away from the area or fight whatever else shows up.

Hopefully, we'll kill it fast enough that it won't matter. I do 63 points with my sneak attack, and I twist the blade before pulling it out, hoping to cause the bleed condition. You have developed an ability. Bleeding Strike. Uncommon ability 1/10. Stamina cost: 25. Cooldown: 1 minute. Strike an enemy for 110% damage and cause bleed.

I do another sneak attack and try to twist the blade again before I pull it out, but the attack does not seem to bleed any more than normal, and nowhere near as much as it bled from the first strike, which is still bleeding. I guess I need to wait for the cooldown before the effect will happen again. The shadow wolf keeps spinning to snap at me, at one point biting down on the arm with the bracer of claws on it. It takes 4 damage from the bracer, but the bite does 14 damage to me, none of which I feel.

The shell is still going strong. The wolf would bite me again, but the two girls with the shields keep distracting it, bashing their weapon against the shield and drawing its attention long enough for me to get another sneak attack strike on it. We don't need the full minute for the cooldown before the shadow wolf dies. Between Vinny's magic throwing spikes of ice into it, my sneak attacks, and the distractions of our two squires, it doesn't take long before we deal the damage we need to take it out.

You have defeated shadow wolf. You gain (300/5) 60 experience. That's more experience for killing one shadow wolf than we got for killing three lynxiths each. This was definitely a good idea. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. The howl called three more of the shadow wolves, and the battle against them is a bit more difficult.

I keep circling the wolves and taking a sneak attack, using Bleeding Strike when it comes off cooldown to deal 69 damage with bleed, which takes out nearly half of the wolf's total hit points with each strike. My shell goes down with another strike, and I take 7 points of actual damage from another bite. But as the wolf tries to bite down on my arm, I stab up under the jaw and into the brain, killing the thing instantly.

We end up with a few cuts and scrapes, but the three shadow wolves aren't much harder to kill than the lynxith, all things considered. We have to do more damage to them, but they don't seem able to get through our defenses all that well. More importantly, those three shadow wolves are worth another 180 experience points to each of us. Which puts me just sixty five points away from level eight. And which is enough experience for Vinny to officially become a mage.

I gesture for everyone to sneak as we move away from the area, not even taking the time to harvest the wolves. I don't know if the howl is going to call anything else to the area, and I don't want to stick around to find out. To my ears, the others are making a lot of noise. Vinny isn't making as much as the girls, but they're all stumbling around and not being nearly as stealthy as I am.

I put a little bit of distance between myself and the rest of the group, once more taking point as I go looking for other creatures. The way I figure it, there's got to be something other than the shadow wolf out here. During the day there are at least three different monsters – the lynxith, the giant mantis, and the giant – so it makes sense that there would be at least that many available at night. And the best thing we can do is to find them before they find us.

I look at the road, trying to get an idea of tracks or trails along the way. I see scratches in the pavement, a torn bit of grass poking up through the asphalt, and a broken tree, all of which lead to my third level of tracking and to another monster. Skeleton Warrior. Basic rare undead, level 8. HP 400/400. Another notification comes through as soon as I spot the skeleton warrior, but I don't have time to pay attention to it.

Mostly because while I spot one skeleton warrior, I also spot the other five of them that are waiting with it and move to surround us. I reup my Shell spell and throw a flame ball at one of the skeletons. I see that it does all of ten points of damage, which realistically isn't much, but I get the feeling that these things might not bleed. You know, since they have no blood. Vinny steps forward and makes a fist, slamming it at nothing as if throwing a punch.

One of the skeletons staggers from the impact, and it seems like the slamming fist did a lot of damage. Good to see that Vinny has some other spells. Blunt force damage seems to be a much better strategy than slashing and stabbing, but we don't have that option. Everyone is still fighting with swords, which seem to do less damage than they're supposed to. I hit one of the skeleton warriors with my sword, and even flanking it I only do 31 damage. That's about half what I'm supposed to.

So they're resistant to slashing damage. That's terrific. They aren't quite surrounding us, but it's close. I can still do my sneak attack, but it does less damage than before. The only good thing about this is that the skeleton warriors seem to be going after the ones with shields first and foremost, and they have higher defense, making it harder for them to take damage. My defense is thirty five, which is pretty high considering but still lower than any of the girls.

Even El has some nice armor now that I've given her a leather vest to wear over her clothes. Wait. Why are they focusing their attacks on the people with shields? Because shields can bash.

"Bash them with your shields!" I shout. The skeletons are fighting by attacking the thing that is most dangerous to them first, hoping to eliminate the threat before wiping us all out. They have many more hit points than we do. I can take three of their hits on my shell, but then I need five minutes of cooldown before I can cast it again. At least I don't have to worry about the cooldown on bleeding strike. It just flat out isn't working on them.

Once Ashley and Gigi start bashing with their shields, they're able to take down one of the skeleton warriors pretty quickly, smashing into it with the edge of their shields and then slamming together on either side of it, crushing the bones. I wonder if my sword would be somehow more effective if I hit with the dull side of the blade, so I flip the sword in my grip and try an awkward swing. It does seem to make a difference, but it's harder to use this way.

Still, it might be something worth doing for fighting skeletons. Better still would be to get some kind of club or mace or something. Something that would smash the skeletons to powder more quickly. There are five of them and five and of us, but we don't go to fighting one on one. The skeletons are still trying to kill our two shield bearers, so they each have two warriors fighting against them. I keep flanking and striking with the back side of my blade, or trying to smash them with the pommel.

The pommel does a surprising sixteen points of damage to the skeleton warriors on its own. Seems like it does the damage of just my strength. When I flank and use my sneak attack, that means I do thirty two points of damage with just the pommel. It's slightly better than I'm getting with the blade, and easier to do than to swing my curved sword backwards. I keep worrying that I'm going to end up cutting myself when I swing that way.

Vinny keeps back, shooting more and more of his fist spells at the skeletons, smashing them back with each blow and laughing in triumph as he does. I get hit, and my shell goes down. Another errant swing from one of the remaining skeletons takes my hit points down by seven points, though I come back and smash the skeleton's arm, breaking it up by where the bicep would be, causing it to drop its sword. I wish these guys were using clubs.

Then we could at least take the clubs from them and use those against them as we defeat them. I take three more hits before we do finally manage to kill the last of the skeletons. Once we get the numbers on our side, it moves to an easier fight, but they still have a lot of hit points. Twenty four hundred between them, but thankfully not as a single pool. They go down as we smash into them.

And Ashley has the bright idea to smash the legs out from one of them, leaving it clawing along the ground and easily avoided until the others are taken care of, when we just stomp the thing to death with my steel toed boots and whatever footwear everyone else has. I take a moment to notice that the girls also have steel toed boots on.

Ashley's toes are exposed steel, with a chain mail kind of covering on them, the chain motif extending to the rest of the black boot as it goes up over her ankle, another chain wrapped around it at the ankle. Gigi has a pair of doc martens that seem to have a steel toe in them and have thick heavy soles that help her stomp that last skeleton down. And El is wearing a pair of boots with a two inch heel that seems to have a steel band between two layers of rubber. Her boots go up her calves.

And Vinny's boots are construction boots that look to be impervious to things like nails or dropped hammers.