But then, as I crept through the bushes that grew in abundance on the island, I suddenly saw Sergeant! Just forty yards away from me, mounted on the gigantic Marsh Mistress. He was fighting twenty night beasts at once, with a level 11 Alpha among them! I could tell right away that the cruel arachnoscorp was losing and dying. It was covered in sharp-toothed monsters clinging to it. All the Marsh Mistress could do was throw off each beast that leaped onto her one after another. She was trying to slowly back off toward the water. They needed help!
I targeted the Alpha, the most dangerous of Sergeant and his mount’s foes. Weaken! Another Weaken! Slow! Infect!
Curse Magic skill increased to level fifty-one!
Mysticism skill increased to level twelve!
The Alpha finally fell behind the Marsh Mistress, but… now it turned in my direction with pinpoint accuracy. It rushed toward me at high speed. Momma! I was about to die. Even with four good legs, I could never have escaped the fast monster. Never mind my current state. I knew perfectly well that there was nothing I could do. If I had more time, more Mana Points, I’d have transformed into a beetle and flown away, but my mana was almost empty, and the Alpha was already on me and… ran by me!
I wheezed in broken relief, unable to believe what had happened. The monster ignored my tiny body and ran by to find his attacker! The Alpha ran all the way to the end of the bluff and stopped sharply.
In the meantime, taking advantage of the strongest enemy’s absence, the Marsh Mistress managed to reach the water. She shook off the most persistent beast, gripping high onto a front leg, then turned and ran straight into the lake. The crowd of Feelers stayed on the bank. Only two or three of the most tenacious night beasts kept their jaws locked and hung from the arachnoscorp like bulldogs from a giant bear. Sergeant whistled loudly and Katy and Tick-Tock appeared from underwater, tearing off and swallowing up the ‘leeches’ in the blink of an eye.
I thought my master was taking advantage of the break to escape on his badly chewed-up Marsh Mistress. The big oaf had other ideas. Sergeant walked the arachnoscorp along in the lake to the far end of the island, where the glowing Alpha still stood, cut off from the main pack of night beasts. Then he attacked it right from the water! The two creeping crocodiles even got involved!
I decided I’d better help out in the fight too. I even limped over to the conflict, opening my spell list as I went. Weaken on the Alpha! Another Weaken! Slow! Then..! Then I was out of mana. But I’d done my job — the slowed and weakened Alpha didn’t even last twenty seconds. Sergeant’s pets tore it to pieces.
Your character is now level fourteen!
Reward: three skill points and one mutation point (total available: six).
Great! The experience from the slain Alpha, even split among all the participants of the fight, was enough to level me up. Sergeant earned a level-up too, reaching level 11. Even Katy the creeping crocodile leveled up to 61, healing all her wounds instantly.
The human jumped down from the arachnoscorp and walked in a circle around the Marsh Mistress, inspecting her wounds. She’d had a rough time. Her tough chitinous armor was bitten through in many places. Two of her legs hung lifelessly.
“Stay strong, beautiful!” the human gave the injured creature an approving pat on its head full of eyes. “We’ll heal you in the morning.”
“Meow!” I finally reached the site of the battle and got my master’s attention. I didn’t want to stay here on the shore in the company of twenty night beasts. Maybe the front-line Feelers wouldn’t touch a kitten either, but they were a lot smaller than the Alpha. I wasn’t sure that they wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want to waste mana on transforming into a beetle to get back to the village — my magic could still be useful.
“You’re here too, little dumbass! I was whistling to the crocodiles, not you,” Sergeant smiled, picking me up and putting me on his shoulder. “The Alphas are dead, so we’re going back to the village. We need to find out what was flying around and screaming up in the sky tonight.”
My master climbed onto the Marsh Mistress and walked right through the water downstream to avoid the pack of Feelers. We used the oxbow lake to get around the firewall, by which the Feelers were already gathering. We climbed over the palisade on the shore to reunite with the other defenders of the village. My master was greeted warmly — everyone had seen how Sergeant had led off the pack of night beasts at the height of the battle and dealt with the Alpha.
I saw the corpse of the second Alpha by the firewall. The village’s defenders had dealt with it and not even lost anyone. And now they were excitedly discussing what had happened, especially the unknown winged beast. It had scared all the defenders to one degree or another when it appeared. Apart from Sergeant — my master apparently hadn’t even felt the psionic attack.
“Varya shot at the winged beast and it flew off to that forest!” Max Dubovitsky insisted adamantly to the others, pointing at the right bank.
The other gunners and melee fighters told their own versions of events, which differed greatly from the Engineer’s. All the stories had just one thing in common — everyone admitted that they’d been terrified and didn’t always know what they were doing. Glutton had fallen right into the fire and badly burned his hair and clothes, although now he couldn’t explain why he’d done something so irrational.
“We were very lucky that some of us managed to hit the creature anyway. It doesn’t matter who it was,” the Hunter leader Washington said, putting a stop to the arguments.
Old Pan hurried to add:
“We’re even luckier that you still have any bullets left. I’m down to my last one. I’ll save it just in case. As for what we’ll do when that winged beast comes back and when you run out of rounds too, I have no idea…”
All fell silent, imagining with alarm the future the old man described. Nobody even paid any attention to the night beasts clustered on the other side of the firewall. Then, in the silence, we heard Sergeant’s young sister Julie screaming in fear. Then Shelly too. A second later, Ashot’s shout rang through the village:
“The workshop is on fire! FIIIIIIIRE!”
Chapter 24 [Sergeant]
Deadly Enemy
OVER SHORT DISTANCES, the Marsh Mistress was capable of moving very quickly, almost instantly. The high palisade was no barrier to the giant eight-legged monster. Within a couple of seconds, I was outside the workshop. What I saw made my hair stand on end. The building was afire, the flames higher every second. The thatch roof smoldered. The wooden walls burned. I heard the soul-splitting cries of my sister from within the flame-shrouded building. She screamed for help. For some reason, I heard no sign of Shelly.
The heat was so strong that going close was suicide. But that didn’t stop me. How could I stop with a loved one inside?! I jumped off the cruel arachnoscorp, ran to the workshop doors. What the hell?! The door was barred with a wooden crosspiece that was stopping the girls from getting out of the burning building. This was no accident — someone tried hard to make sure Julie and Shelly died a horrific death. I kicked aside the bar holding the door closed and flung it open. Julie staggered out of the burning building in clouds of soot.
“Shelly’s back there… on the floor… unconscious,” my sister told me, coughing from the acrid smoke.
Got it. I had to save the Huntress! I took as deep a breath as I could, steeled myself, jumped across the flames and into the burning building. My eyebrows and hair lit up at once. Too late, I covered my head with my jacket.
Choose the learnable skill Tenacity for your character?
Not right now! I waved away the untimely game notification. Seconds counted for everything. I tried to find the veich girl, but she wasn’t near the door.
Physique check successful!
Perception check failed!
It was a small room, but it was hard to see anything in the thick smoke, and there was that damn workbench in the middle of the room… I only found the Huntress when I tripped over something soft a
t the far wall of the workshop. Shelly was lying right by the window — apparently she’d been trying to breathe fresh air through it right up until she lost consciousness. I lifted the surprisingly light breathless girl in my arms and staggered outside. My jacket was smoldering, in places even burning. I threw it off.
Gently, I put Shelly down on the ground. I noticed that the Huntress’s fur was scorched on her shoulder and back, baring burnt skin. The girl wasn’t breathing and didn’t react to my shouts and shakes. She needed resuscitation! Mouth-to-mouth, like they taught us in first-aid classes.
It worked!
“Aaaaah!” Shelly awakened with a scream, opened her eyes, focused on me and… burst into tears. I thought she was crying in pain, but it turned out to be something else entirely — the unlucky Huntress was terrified of being blamed for the fire.
“It wasn’t me, Serrrgeant! I’m not guilty this time! I not light stove, not light firrreplace! Julie will tell you!”
I hugged the crying girl and tried to calm her down.
“Come on, don’t cry! I know it wasn’t you…”
The blocked door made it very clear that the arsonist was someone else. And speaking of that… A birchbark bucket lying nearby caught my eye. I could still see traces of something dark and sticky on its inner walls. I carefully freed myself from Shelly’s embrace, stood and approached the suspicious item, which had no reason to be there at all. I picked up the bucket, looked at it, even sniffed the contents. Mystery solved. The walls of the bucket were covered in sap from a local swamp reed that contained concentrated vegetable oil and gas. At Pan’s Landing, the thick and flammable liquid was poured over the wood in the firewall ditch to make it catch fire fast. So that was why the workshop went up in flames in seconds!
People were already gathering around us, but nobody dared approach the burning building for now. I handed Shelly, burned and still breathing heavily, over to Healer Anna, then turned back to the burning building. No hope of the workshop helping us find the arsonist now — it was engulfed in flames, and the roof had just fallen in. If there were any clues left behind, they were on fire.
But there’d been a heavy downpour the previous night, and the day had been overcast, with a couple of light rains. That meant the earth around the workshop was wet, and in it were the tracks of those who had been there in the last day. My own tracks, my sister’s, Shelly’s bare pawprints. And a chain of tracks belonging to some awfully familiar boots. My old boots. Badass!
Tracking skill increased to level six!
Eagle Eye skill increased to level eleven!
I gritted my teeth and looked around. The former convict was among the onlookers nearby, trying to worm his way into the crowd of villagers and excitedly discussing the fire with them. My eyes filled with blood. To be honest, I don’t even remember mounting the Marsh Mistress. But I remember perfectly giving my pet the order to attack and kill that bastard. Everyone gasped in fear when the giant and terrible arachnoscorp leaped into the crowd and grabbed one of their number in her mandibles.
Monster Riding
Achievement earned: Paid Back Threefold!
Fame increased to 3.
ATTENTION! You killed the same player three times! Now you are Badass’s sworn enemy and are constantly marked for him with a red marker. Badass will always know which direction you are in and the distance between you. Be careful!
Surprising… I hadn’t heard about that from the other players. Anyway, it didn’t matter. I still had to kill that backstabber! Oh, and look at that! My boots finally dropped in the loot. Welcome home, boys!
“Sergeant, what are you doing?! Why did you kill a human, especially a member of our village?” Max Dubovitsky’s angry voice pulled me back to reality.
I started to explain my actions, to tell him about the locked workshop door and the incendiary liquid, but Haze rudely interrupted me.
“It all happened just like Badass said. He was complaining that Sergeant hasn’t left him alone since he came to the new world. Since the night train, he’s been harassing him, threatening him and trying to get hold of his boots. Sergeant even attacked him in the woods near the arrival point. In that fight, Badass was forced to defend himself and killed his attacker. Then Sergeant turned crazy. He kept hunting down the poor old man again and again… All for the sake of a pair of boots!”
What the hell was he talking about? Haze was spouting absolute nonsense, but what frightened me was that the villagers of Pan’s Landing were listening to him! They nodded in agreement, turned their frowning faces to me. Not wanting to listen to any more nonsense, I rudely interrupted Haze and described how Badass attacked me during the day on the shore. I even took the criminal’s shank out of my pocket and showed it to them all.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Haze shouted. “All day I’ve been wondering where my homemade chisel could have gotten. Pan’s Landing seems to be a place of good people… Except for one man — Sergeant. Not only is he a killer, he’s a thief to boot!”
The people murmured unhappily. I was shocked to see that they really did think me guilty of all the sins he described. Even murder and theft! There were calls to drive me out of the village or even to execute me. This was crazy! What could I do?! I knew I couldn’t argue with his psionic magic — in wars of words, he was like a fish in water. Everyone there listened to him open-mouthed, taking in every word like it was dogma. Time to pull out all the stops.
I sighed heavily and spoke:
“Haze, I know you’re a strong psionic mage and one of the Pharaoh’s nobles. I know you’ve been in this new world six months already, and that you and Hulk are here in Pan’s Landing on a secret mission…”
“What the hell are you talking about, Sergeant? Do you listen to your own bullshit?”
Haze smiled broadly. Only his eyes gave him away; I could tell by his furious gaze that he was shocked, even at a loss. The mask of his happy smile and nonchalant attitude was slipping. I had to continue my assault.
“Don’t bother denying it. Former slaves who escaped from the New Pharaohs have identified you.”
Everyone present fell silent, shocked by my accusation. Only the crack of burning wood in the nearby workshop broke the silence. Haze just laughed in response to the accusation. Still smiling, he turned to his bodyguard.
“Kill him!”
What?! I hadn’t expected that. Hulk silently took an Uzi out of a holster inside his jacket and, emotionless as a robot, aimed the gun at me. It seemed death was inevitable, I had nowhere to run. But suddenly, Haze shouted hysterically:
“Kill the kitten first, Hulk! There it is, running by the wall! Kill that ginger bastard!”
“What?”
The strange order surprised even the normally brainless musclehead bodyguard. He turned to his master. Those seconds of hesitation were enough for the villagers of Pan’s Landing to finally come to their senses. Some shouted, some ran. Others acted — I heard a lone, loud gunshot.
A red spot appeared right between Haze’s eyes. The mage slumped down silently on the steps of the porch he and Hulk stood on.
Hulk looked at his slain master, then raised his Uzi again, this time aiming the weapon not at me, and not even at my pet Whiskers. A short spray of bullets cracked out. Standing a little apart from the other villagers, Pan fell to his knees, dropped his smoking rifle. The oldest man in the village grabbed his chest, then slowly dropped his eyes and looked at his bloody palm. Then silently and slowly fell face forward.
Hulk fired his next burst in a fan over the heads of the people standing before him.
“Go back to your homes! Don’t come out until my master…”
The thug didn’t finish, reeling back as a heavy clay cup flew out of the crowd and smashed on his head. I turned, my eyes seeking the brave thrower. And was astounded. The foolishly fearless attacker was Edward Samarsky — the momma’s boy, as I’d thought him since our fight in the restaurant and right up until this uncharacteristically valiant deed.
; Hulk stood up slowly, not even paying attention to an arrow that thrummed into his shoulder. The Hunter leader Washington had joined the battle, full of vengeful fury for the death of his friend Pan. The bodyguard bared bloodied teeth and aimed his Uzi at the crowd. He fired for a long time, mowing down the people with clear enjoyment as they ran, until his magazine ran out of rounds. Even a second arrow shot into his stomach didn’t stop the killing.
“I said get back to your homes, sheep!” he shouted like a madman as he loaded a spare magazine into the machine-pistol.
A dart thumped into the wooden door next to Hulk’s head. Shelly? I threw my big axe at the killer, but I missed too. Damn it! I suddenly realized how dumb I was being! I had a machine of death standing nearby, albeit badly injured from the last fight! How could I forget the Marsh Mistress, you ask? You try playing this ‘game’! I wasn’t used to how I should fight now, with my game class. With bullets flying, it didn’t occur to me that I had pets.
“Attack!” I shouted, whistling to my cruel arachnoscorp.
The Marsh Mistress leaped from her position, jumping onto the porch of the of the common house. Hulk, moving very slowly for such a well-trained and experienced professional (or was it the pressure of the moment that made time flow more slowly for me?) had finished reloading his gun… only his right hand was suddenly caught in the sharp mandibles of the giant spideress. Crunch! Blood sprayed. At the same time, the Marsh Mistress injected her venomous stinger into the man, grabbed him in her many legs and began to roll the killer up into a cocoon.
“No! He’s too dangerous! Kill him now, don’t capture him!” I told the Marsh Mistress. My pet corrected herself, biting off the killer’s head.
Your character is now level twelve!
Your character is now level thirteen!
Your character is now level fourteen!
Reward: three skill points (total available: fifteen) and one mutation point (total available: nine).
A triple level-up! Haze and Hulk must have been pretty high-level for the game system to reward me so generously for contributing to killing them. And not only me — Shelly had shot up to level twenty-four after spending her entire supply of throwing darts. And Washington and Ashot leveled up too. Even the Marsh Mistress leveled up once, to eighty-nine, healing all her wounds!
A Cat and His Human (League of Losers Book #1): LitRPG Series Page 21