Chương 184: Book Five, Chapter 87: The Hunter

~Hawk Kippling: Monster Hunter~ Back home, monsters were simple. Ancient witches, sorcerers, and priests defeated beasts of unfathomable power using magic they didn't understand. The magic was mostly lost to time, but the monsters were not, not really. These creatures had their own ironic form of immortality. As the great beasts were scavenged and broken down, their genetic code worked its way through the food cycle. The insects got their meal, then the birds, that sort of thing.

Every living thing feeds off something else, passing this invasive genetic material along. It eventually makes its way into humans or other animals, occasionally latching on and binding itself to human DNA—creating a ticking time bomb. This process began eons ago. That's the theory, at least. Vampires, werewolves, heck, even those putrid ghouls called zombies could all be explained by this phenomenon.

There was a good chance that I myself was walking around with some combination of ancient genetic code that might one day result in a mutation in my descendants—growing fangs or claws, being able to see in the dark, breathing underwater, or even lusting for blood. It was all in our DNA. My people were an interesting bunch. Our shadows had monsters in them. As time went on, the emergence of these phenomena slowed, and my world forgot about them. They became legends. Vampires? Those are just scary stories.

Werewolves? It must have just been a bear. If you tried to discuss any of this in your thesis at university, your advisor would threaten to drop you. I would know. But if you were one of the unfortunate souls who discovered these weren't legends, that these monsters still crawled on the dirt, I was the type of person you wanted to know. I've killed them all—hunted them down. Vampires, werewolves, hags, all sorts of undead. I've tracked and studied pretty much everything there is to study.

In fact, there's only one thing I've hunted that I didn't manage to kill. I tracked it all the way to Carousel. Once I've killed my ultimate prey, then I can die for real. The werewolves of Stray Dawn were a popular breed in Carousel stories. They were smart enough, theoretically, to take part in even complex plots. Most of the time, the werewolf virus in my world resulted in degenerative mental function. They were good at killing, but after a while, they stopped being good at anything else.

Carousel didn't like that, so they were rarely used. But these Stray Dawn wolves? They were practically humans with superpowers. After a bit of practice, they could shift back and forth—even without the full moon. They could think, they could plan—assuming they had a pack leader who ordered them to. Fascinating creatures. Their mutation wasn't really a mutation at all; it was a curse. The magic of my homeworld worked differently and could never produce something like this.

Unfortunately, I'd never been in a position to study this type of magic. I always got cast as a monster hunter, not a magic scholar. At least I could appreciate the exercise I get in this role. This was shaping up to be a good one. It was daytime. Antoine had shifted and run off into the woods, and I had a trope just for this situation, a perfect way of tracking him down—by following his blood trail, disturbances in the leaves, whatever was there. It was all I was permitted to do.

I wasn't allowed to lead the players to victory, but that didn't mean I couldn't help out. The other Paragons and I had devoted our eternal lives to helping the players win the game, even if that meant playing demeaning roles or joining the likes of Silas Dyrkon or the Proprietor just to keep an eye on them. Because the players were the key, it had to be them to beat Carousel.

I leaned against one of the stone walls in the fort, watching as hundreds of gallons of nitric acid were hauled into the courtyard in plastic jugs. Nitric acid, distilled water, copper scrap, and all the silver from every pawn shop within a hundred-mile radius, it seemed. Other players had discovered rolling silver before, but none had taken the next step and realized that it was the act of purifying silver that hurt the wolves.

Many assumed it was silver vapor, and that was a pretty good tactic, too, but purification won the blue ribbon. Here I was, thinking Andrew Hughes must be the smartest player to ever run Stray Dawn. He certainly figured out the science part of it pretty quickly, but it turned out it was all the Film Buff's idea. Riley Lawrence. He wasn't much to look at. And yet, he was our best shot to beat the game—if we even had a shot. He may not have been the man for the job, but he was the man with the job.

What qualified him for this honor? Hell, if I knew. With fewer than a dozen players left, they had to pick someone to hang their hopes on. As I saw him excitedly help sort supplies and bring in a load of empty glass bottles from a nearby soda factory, wearing that dumb smile on his face, I had to wonder how much he even knew. The kid was still wearing the suit from when he arrived at the dinner party. He had proper clothing to change into, but he liked his Luggage Tag so much that he would rather look like a fool.

Why did that bother me so much? They were making bombs—or something similar—that could purify silver chemically. I knew how powerful rolling silver was against these cursed werewolves. Carousel was going to love it. The werewolf curse wasn't a vague hand-wavy magic concept. Instead, it was literally in the air like radio waves, connecting them to the pack, to their pack leader, and maybe even further than that. I had no idea—no one had ever gotten that far. I wondered how much Riley and Andrew understood.

Purifying silver drew the curse out of the air and temporarily disconnected the wolf from the magic source that allowed it to exist. Without the magic of the curse, the werewolf's anatomy was not compatible with life—or at least, a comfortable life. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Yep. If they could use that weapon well, they might just win. But they likely wouldn't. They were outgunned.

I'd seen so many player wipes that I could almost call it before First Blood. Unfortunately, despite being a fine planner, Riley Lawrence had one major flaw: he was a sacrificial character. He must have already known this, but I could see it plain as day on the red wallpaper. He was next on the list. He would die for Second Blood. That was his lot. That was his role. Damn shame. It didn't matter how good of a weapon he and Andrew were building.

If he was next on the list, he was going to die, and no matter what he hid behind, the wolves would get through it—because the script said they must. From what I'd seen, he already knew this. He was likely prepared to sacrifice himself to ensure the survival of the group. I heard he'd done that before. We just had to hope they could get through the finale without his quick thinking. Who knew? They finally finished unloading the supplies and were meeting up for a group talk.

The surviving players were Kimberly, a fine actress; Michael, a great fighter who was unwilling to take initiative; Andrew, a brilliant mind but a poor healer and not exactly one to endear himself to the audience; and Riley, the only one of them who seemed excited about what was going to happen—even if he tried to hide it. I walked closer. I had to stay in character, but maybe I could find some way of nudging them in the right direction nonetheless.

"There's going to be a big fight," Riley said.

"I don't know how many werewolves there are, but I expect Second Blood is going to save Kirst a lot of money on mercenaries…. Unless he paid upfront. We just have to find a way to control it—to make sure that we don't lose our strongest pieces on the board." They quieted their voices so the nearby NPCs couldn't hear. How cute.

"When you say strongest pieces, are you referring to yourself?" Andrew asked, not angry but amused.

"No," Riley said.

"Right now, we have Kimberly because her plot is gaining a lot of momentum. And we also have rolling silver, and we've devoted so much time to that, it's got to have a big impact. I'd hate to waste it on Second Blood." I couldn't help but flash a grin. He was right. You only got one shot with a weapon like that. If you repeated yourself, you'd find that it just wouldn't work as well. It would be boring to the audience. You had to build up steam with something like this, and as soon as you let it out, it was gone.

For maximum impact, this trap had to be saved for the finale. As a monster hunter, finding the secret weakness was literally sixty percent of what I did, and you had to be careful when you unveiled it.

"So, what are your suggestions?" Andrew asked. Riley started to speak, but then he looked up at me—as if questioning whether he should talk about this in front of me. Fuck it, I thought. I winked at him. Made his day. He continued to speak, now a little more confidently.

"We need to set up a sacrifice," he said.

"We need to lose this round so that we can win the final battle, and we need to do it without using rolling silver—or whatever we're calling this chemical concoction… splashing silver… dissolving silver… maybe." Andrew looked around at the supplies they had gathered.

"How are we supposed to decide?" Andrew asked.

"Aren't we just going to get attacked no matter what? Speaking of that, what is the narrative explanation for why the werewolves would attack us directly instead of just running away?" Important questions to ask.

"Her," Riley said, nodding toward Kimberly.

"Without her, we would have to go find them. But I'm pretty sure the pack wants Kimberly, so we can trust that they will attack us eventually. I'm light on the exact details. For Second Blood, though, we need to keep the fight away from the fort." They looked at each other, having their silent conversations.

"That still leaves the question of how," Andrew said.

"Well, look at my plot armor," Riley said.

"We know where they're striking next."

"I see," Andrew said.

"That's the plan," Riley said.

"That means you have to stick around, execute both the rolling silver plan, and ensure that Kimberly's whole subplot comes to fruition." So, he did understand his role.

"I'll go with you," Michael said.

"I fucked everything up so far. I missed my subplot, and I didn't manage to catch the wolf. Wherever you're going for Second Blood, I'll go too." Riley shook his head.

"We don't need to lose two players," he said.

"That would defeat the whole purpose of my sacrifice."

"Then I'll go instead of you," Michael said.

"Logan said it was possible."

"That was a special circumstance," Andrew said.

"Riley has low effective plot armor. He's going to be targeted next."

"Well, not necessarily," Riley said. Wait a second. Had he figured it out?

"Technically, Michael could set off Second Blood by himself," Riley said.

"How?" Andrew asked.

"He could do something really, really stupid," Riley answered, barely suppressing a grin.

"He could fall for a trap." This was fun.

"Force Carousel's hand?" Andrew asked.

"I'm not saying he has to do this or that it's even a smart thing," Riley said.

"But hypothetically, if he did want to take my place, Hawk is about to take some mercenaries out and follow that blood trail with Antoine. But it's obviously a trap. It's too early to work." This was getting interesting. How much did he know?

"How do you know it's a trap?" Kimberly asked.

"There's a big reveal that has to happen. You know how it turned out that Antoine was the werewolf? Well, that doesn't really make sense because we already established that the little needle of werewolf saliva couldn't possibly have caused him to shift so soon," Riley said.

"So I think I know what happened." Instead of going on, he waited for one of them to ask.

"What happened?" Kimberly asked. A rant ensued.

"We misunderstood how the werewolf trope works. We knew that any of us could be the werewolf, and we wouldn't know until the reveal, but we assumed that meant the werewolf would be a player until they were revealed. But what if it didn't mean that? What if Antoine counted as infected and therefore counted as an enemy the entire time? If he were an enemy, then the normal rules of targeting and priority wouldn't apply anymore.

So, even if Lila had to be First Blood, that didn't mean Antoine couldn't get attacked by another werewolf beforehand. Think about it. These werewolves are smart. If that blonde mercenary is a werewolf, as we think he is, I bet what he did was attack Antoine to help speed up the transformation. You know, he ate his heart. That's the only explanation for how Antoine could have turned so fast. I got footage of Antoine on his little patrol duty.

He kept going Off-Screen and getting distracted looking into the distance. Not quite disassociating, not On-Screen, not that my Dailies trope would tell me, at least. I bet the blonde merc did him in on patrol, making him shift sooner than he would have. I think that's the next big reveal because we still have to reveal that the blonde mercenary is a werewolf. It all fits together." It seemed he even stumped Andrew for a moment with that one. Maybe he wasn't half bad as a player.

Riley continued, "Second Blood is a perfect time for that reveal. So if we sent Michael and a bunch of mercenaries out with the blonde mercenary to track down Antoine, I bet it's a 'mistake' that could be avoided. Deliberately falling into a trap is one way to manipulate targeting order since Carousel will punish you for that, and that will change the priority for an attack." The others looked at each other and then at me as if I could comment. Michael looked ready to go for it.

"I'll take out as many as I can," he said.

"But we don't have to do that," Riley said.

"It might be useful to have a fighter around for the finale without Antoine here." I looked at the shaggy-haired young man before me. The truth was that this team was under-leveled and outmatched. Unfortunately, that was the way you had to play the game. It was the only way to ever escape. I looked around at the supplies they had gathered for their secret weapon against the wolves. Riley and Andrew had turned this story into a battle of wits.

That was exactly what they needed to do with their meager muscle reserves. A battle of brawn was not going to be won by the players. It never was. These werewolves were fine specimens. Even if Antoine hadn't been turned, fighting these wolves in a straight-up deathmatch was folly. No, what they needed to survive was to keep their planner around a little longer. He might actually have known what he was doing. As always, I couldn't win this storyline for them, but I could help. I cleared my throat.

"I can track him wherever he went. If we're going on an expedition, if we're going on a hunt, I will lead it. And I might need a strong fighting man at my side," I said, looking at Michael.

"We should let you three stay here and work on your plans while the real men go get the job done." To be clear, I had three PhDs, but this storyline demanded I be a testosterone-filled mega-man dumb enough to follow a werewolf back to its pack with out scouting things out first. When we were back On-Screen, I would play my part. They looked at me like I might be some sort of demon. They didn't trust Paragons. I couldn't blame them.

"So that must be the right decision," Kimberly said.

"If the paragon's going along with it."

"Maybe," Riley said.

"We don't know that," he added, hesitant. I wasn't going to risk saying anymore. I walked forward and clapped Michael on the back. If he was willing to be the Second Blood sacrifice, then it was probably the right call. I'd deliver him like a present at the winter solstice. Stray Dawn was a werewolf story, and there were dozens of variations that called for a Monster Hunter Paragon. I had played this story hundreds of times.

I had never seen its deep secrets, and I had never seen someone go this far with the rolling silver subplot. For a long time, players would just try to hook up with Serena—or Sarah, whatever she was calling herself nowadays. I used to get so annoyed. And here we were, possibly at the end—the real end—and it all came down to this little story on the outskirts of Carousel. One last hunt. One last group of players. And if they didn't succeed, we were doomed. I might never survive to hunt again.

I might never find the beast I tracked all the way to this godforsaken world. I had died thousands of times, and this might end up being the only one that mattered. If I could help them win, I would do it.