Choose the learnable skill Acrobatics for your character?
Some Acrobat I’d be, with my low Luck. I was lucky I didn’t break anything in that roll… While I stood by the wall and caught my breath, a double shot rang out behind me, followed by Max and Varya exchanging gleeful shouts — the sherkhs must have dropped out of stealth on the other side of the house too, and the Engineer and his daughter took their chance to thin our enemies’ ranks. And the winged veyer, who had finally come round and descended from the cupboard he’d flown up to in a panic, shot a crossbow bolt through the window. I didn’t know if our Thief hit, but a fireball flew at the house in response, making the flames lick up ever higher. Another minute and we’d all die in this furnace.
Tenacity skill increased to level nine!
That was nice, of course, but the 0.25% boost to my fire resistance wasn’t about to make much difference. I could barely breathe. My hair steamed, ready to catch fire at any moment. What was this doing to my allies, who had neither the Hardy Brute perk, nor the Tenacity skill, nor heightened resistance to environmental forces from high Physique? One look at the Engineer was all it took to know that he was about to lose consciousness any second. We had to risk it.
“Follow me, we’re going outside! Varya, into stealth! Edward, carry Margarita!” I commanded, lifting the big table before me by its legs to serve us as a shield. If it fit through the door, of course.
The table fit when I turned it sideways. But the Engineer’s daughter didn’t manage to get into stealth — at first she turned invisible, but then she dropped out of it a second later. I suspected that the sherkhs were having similar problems. It was hard to figure out another reason for them all coming out of stealth at once. It was a strange phenomenon. I wondered if it had anything to do with the constant howling of the raptorhounds all around. But most incredibly of all — nobody shot at us! All three of our enemies stood with their crossbows discharged, having fired them at a level eleven Alpha that appeared by the house. The other sherkhs on this side of the house were busy with the night beasts too, in particular the two Alphas, and they paid us no mind. They’d pay for that! I threw away the heavy table, took out my Stern Mentor and brought the bronze club down on the head of the nearest archer. Got him! The stunned sherkh fell down, all his Stamina Points gone.
Hand-to-Hand Combat skill increased to level twenty-one!
Heavy Armor skill increased to level sixteen!
Three or four throwing knives bounced off my tough bone armor. I needed to say thanks to Max Dubovitsky for creating the heavy armor out of giga-komodo shell plates. It had gotten me out of plenty of trouble. One of the sherkhs put away his useless throwing knives and drew a curved blade, but then hesitated a moment, measuring up my armor and club, and decided to flee instead. The second jumped away and started reloading his crossbow, then suddenly fell down with a huge hole in his chest. Gross… It looked like a giant piece of flesh had been bitten out of his body along with his heart and half of both lungs. The rifle shot had boomed out right by my ear and nearly deafened me. I turned, planning to thank the Engineer or his daughter for the critical hit, but then froze in surprise when I saw that neither of them had saved me.
Margarita Ovchinnikov stood with the third gun at her shoulder. She’d just leveled up to nineteen. And the rifle in her hands was familiar. I remembered seeing it recently, hanging on the wall of Bald Skull’s house. Its owner had showed it to me. An ‘elephant gun,’ he’d called it, with some crazy high caliber that would tear small wild game apart, and so could only be used for hunting beasts as big as a T-rex.
“Hey, Sergeant,” the girl said, her voice not only healthy, but even playful, her muteness and weakness both gone. “How can I help?”
I have to say, in her elegant leather bodysuit, with the rifle in her hands and a cartridge belt at her waist, Margarita no longer looked like a downtrodden serving girl, but a proud huntress or even a daring bandit. All she needed was some cowboy boots, a broad-brimmed hat and a bay horse and she’d look like a stagecoach robber straight out of the Wild West.
That meant we had another gunner. Perfect! I ordered the gunners to cover our retreat to the farthest pens and to take out anyone who tried to get close to us. We ran through the darkness, away from the raging fire. Then I noticed that it wasn’t just Bald Skull’s house in flames. The pen of tamed raptorhounds was on fire too, along with the workshop, the storehouse and the structure where the Beast Catcher had been trying to tame the Chimeric Cougar. It seemed the sherkhs had made it their goal to burn the whole place down. But I suspected that the invisible ones had made a mistake — the night beasts overwhelmed them with their fury and numbers, and their main advantage — the ability to fire at enemies from stealth — wasn’t working. Right in front of me, a sherkh girl fell, struck down by the Alpha and then swarmed by a heap of sharp-toothed beasts. The sherkh who I’d stunned was already being eaten alive by Feelers, his death scream quickly cut off.
One Feeler strayed, rushed toward us, but fell down dead a second later, rolling across the ground with a bolt through its eye. The veyer laughed and reloaded his crossbow as he ran. We wasted no time, trying to get as far away as possible from the bloody battle between the sherkhs and the night beasts. Woah! I nearly crapped my pants when a huge toothy maw at the end of a long neck shot right at me out of the darkness. The teeth stopped only a couple of feet from my face, and then I recognized Irosaurus Regina.
Although the animal belonged to Varya, I suddenly got an interesting idea. The raptorhounds obeyed larger predators in nature, and the megasaurus suited that role just perfectly. I climbed up behind our Scout onto the huge dinosaur’s back.
“Trust me!” I said to the Engineer’s daughter, turning back in confusion. I told her to direct Irosaurus toward the pen of wild raptorhounds.
The huge megasaurus crashed into the raptorhound pen, bringing down the fence. Thirty reptiles scattered in all directions, pressing themselves to the far walls of the pen in fear. I shouted as loud as I could and pointed my club at the nearest pack of night beasts.
“Attack! Tear them apart!”
Then I led by example, turning the gigantic megasaurus and aiming her at the enemy. The Marsh Mistress suddenly hove into view and joined my mad rush at the enemy. Then it happened! With a fearsome howl, the whole pack of raptorhounds followed me!
Monster Riding skill increased to level fifteen!
Beast Master skill increased to level twelve!
Yes, get them! Five or six Feelers went down in the first three seconds, shredded in the raptors’ teeth. Drunk on blood, the reptiles seethed into the fight, but I directed the megasaurus to the other pen where thirty more raptorhounds were jumping at the fence, howling and desperate to fight. Time to free them and combine the packs! As if from nowhere, the Chimeric Cougar suddenly appeared and joined us, her mouth covered in blood.
Beast Master skill increased to level thirteen!
Your character is now level twenty-five!
Reward: three skill points (total available: twelve) and one mutation point (total available: twelve).
CONGRATULATIONS! You reached level twenty-five! Reward: +2 character stat points. Your game class has been set to Beast Catcher permanently. You can no longer change your game class.
Beast Catcher class bonuses: +20 to Taming skill, +20 to Beast Master skill. Resource and time cost to tame creatures is halved. Wild beasts will not attack you first, with the exception of those in packs, those over double your level, game bosses and night beasts.
Yes! I’d done it! I was overjoyed at my reward, and just the fact that I’d finally gotten to level twenty-five! Now I could leave the beginner’s sandbox and head out to the wider world. At my command, the megasaurus emitted a terrible roar that echoed through the land.
“Sergeant, this is my animal, you know! You gave it to me yourself!” Varya reminded me, looking back at me from her seat in front and frowning. I just laughed.
“Of course she’s you
rs. But what difference does it make now? We were dying in a fire five minutes ago, and now we’re winning! Look! The sherkhs are running, and the night beasts only have one Alpha left. We’re winning!”
In a flood of emotion, I pulled the girl close and kissed her. The Engineer’s daughter was so surprised by my boldness that she didn’t even resist. I quickly got a grip on myself, pulled back, apologized for my lack of restraint. Especially as the sherkhs, who I’d written off only a moment ago, had organized themselves and now attacked again. A fireball flew out of the darkness and exploded right in the thick of our raptorhounds, launching the reptiles into the air and noticeably decreasing their number, and the herd bonuses along with it. Worse, at least ten fast figures in dark clothes started taking out the raptorhounds methodically, one after another. I started my celebration far too soon…
I jumped off Irosaurus onto the Marsh Mistress and steered the many-legged beast toward our most dangerous enemy — the mage! Lightning thundered down, struck the huge spideress in the chest, but the strike wasn’t fatal to such a large and powerful creature. The Marsh Mistress lost only quarter of her health. Then a jump and… damn it! The enemy Elemental Mage had incredible agility, too, dodging the eight-legged attack and running away to the side. Although… I slowly smiled from ear to ear; the Elemental Mage’s movement speed was getting slower and slower with each passing second. My ginger Shadow Hexxer was alive and working with all his might.
Twin rifle shots rang out behind me — our gunners striving to take the sherkh mage out of the fight. But as the bullets landed, a blue cocoon flashed up around the mage’s body and deflected them. A crossbow bolt fired by the Thief was also suspended in the air without reaching its target. It was some magic shield. Ignoring an arrow piercing through the darkness and sticking into my left shoulder, I guided the Marsh Mistress toward the level 56 Elemental Mage once more.
Ouch… A fireball hit the spider and burned us both. But that was the last thing the sherkh could do. His shining cocoon broke, and the Marsh Mistress sank her mandibles into the enemy’s chest.
Heavy Armor skill increased to level seventeen!
Tenacity skill increased to level ten!
Monster Riding skill increased to level sixteen!
I managed to beat out the fire, in no small part thanks to Whiskers appearing next to me, his touches putting out the fires. A level 33 Shadow Hexxer, wow… I stroked the little cat, put him on my shoulder and looked around. The last sherkhs were running away as fast as they could, but nobody pursued them. The battlefield was littered with the bodies of sherkhs, Feelers and raptorhounds. Fifteen surviving raptorhounds, many in a terrible state, staggered through the slaughter like timid shadows. Victory had come at a high price…
Edward Samarsky approached, his jacket wet with blood. “I caught two archers,” he said. “I leveled up just in time, otherwise I’d have croaked.”
Max Dubovitsky limped over. “Yeah, it’s a miracle we survived.”
Julie the little Veterinarian sniffled. “Not everyone did,” she said. “I lost Princess. And look over there,” she pointed sadly into the distance.
I looked in the direction she was pointing. The Chimeric Cougar, black and red with burns, her fur still smoldering, howled in anguish as she leaned over something small and blackened. I jumped down from the Marsh Mistress, walked toward the cougar. The huge beast was licking her tiny kitten, now a hardly recognizable clump of burning meat, trying to bring it back to life. I couldn’t hold back my tears. I fell to my knees beside her. Julie approached and laid hands on the corpse, held on for a few seconds, then shook her head — there was nothing she could do. Darkness’s kitten was dead.
All the members of the League of Losers gazed at me silently, awaiting further instructions. I stood, looked around. There was nothing to do here in these smoldering ruins, especially since the sherkhs could come back and attack again any time, possibly with reinforcements. I heard the crack of assault rifles and the boom of grenades in the distance — the sherkhs must be attacking the market town too, and the humans were defending. If the sherkhs were victorious there, then they’d head here to finish off their bloody business and end the survivors. We needed to get away, and fast.
Thankfully, the giga-komodos had been forced to interrupt their sleep to get out of their burning pen, and our Atlas was wandering nearby, sniffing at the smoke and shaking his armored head in disgust. We needed to saddle him and get out of there before he rolled up into a ball again.
“We’re leaving!” I commanded, pointing to the southwest, toward our quest and the minotaur. “And we’re taking the raptorhounds with us. The sherkhs are enemies to us now, and these fast beasts seem able to knock them out of stealth with their howl, and stop them disappearing again. We’re going to need that to survive now.”
Chapter 28 [Kitten]
Rest
WE SHOULDN’T HAVE left… From the sherkhs’ conversations, I knew there was a group of invisible fighters guarding the respawn point. That meant Bald Skull and his servants would revive completely helpless, surrounded by enemies. They would likely die again and again, losing multiple lives. That really bothered me, but I had no idea where the nearest respawn point was. I had no way to help the our welcoming host. Varya didn’t even bother translating my suggestion to spend the night combing the area in search of reviving players. She thought it was dumb. We were alive, and that was lucky enough. And this wasn’t even our war — that’s what the Scout believed, and so did the other members of our group too.
And so the League of Losers fled the war, taking to its heels (and paws, hooves and spider legs) as fast as it could. All the same, Max Dubovitsky was clearly nervous. In his view, we were moving far too slowly, and our enemy could easily catch us up. The Marsh Mistress slowed everyone down — although the cruel arachnoscorp tried as hard as she could, she was still slower than Irosaurus Regina, Atlas, Darkness and the raptorhounds. Nobody even suggested that we abandon our strongest assault animal. Sergeant just pushed the giant spider harder and fed her with copious meat so she could recover her stamina and move her chitinous legs faster. Varya and Avir Tan-Hoshi followed behind us, covering our group’s tracks as much as they could.
The night was unusually cold. I saw frost on the grass for the first time in the new world, and puddles covered with a thin crust of ice. The Philosopher was right — the warm season was ending. We had to prepare for the winter. Maybe it was the low temperature that stopped Atlas from curling up and sleeping, which was all he usually did at night. Instead, the armored giga-komodo stubbornly kept up his steady pace, working his muscles and staying warm.
The raptorhounds walking with us got distracted by a forest beast that we scared out of hiding, and at some point split from the group, disappearing quietly into the night. Only a tar-black female at level 52 and two males covered in horrible burns at levels 34 and 45, continued to walk with us. The female was the same one that understood me in the tamed animal pen. She was probably the cleverest of all the raptorhounds Bald Skull had tamed. She had enough Intellect to understand me, and now that I’d taken the Basic Animal Speech perk, I could translate her whistles and roars. The black female feared the dangerous nocturnal forest. She was hungry and tired, and loud about it. I did my best to calm her with Soothe, to stop the valuable beast from abandoning us like the rest of her pack.
This raptorhound had no name, and it still said in her description that she was Bald Skull’s pet. Although that didn’t stop the strong black raptor from carrying out the commands of the other Beast Catcher and periodically blasting out a sharp scream that echoed between the trees, to reveal any sherkhs that might be following us. The two males weren’t as smart, and couldn’t understand me. They had other things on their mind, anyway — their terrible burns covered almost their entire skin, and they had other wounds from the battle with the sherkhs. Sergeant’s sister treated the injured animals. The little Veterinarian rubbed ointment on the raptors’ burns and bandaged them up, to
keep their arrow and knife wounds from getting infected. The two injured raptorhounds weren’t tamed, but I felt no danger from the carnivores. They at least had enough Intellect to know that they couldn’t survive on their own in their condition, and that the humans not only had no ill will toward them, but wanted to help, heal and feed them. The lizards took me as an ally and a member of their pack, so they made no move to attack me.
In any case, I had Darkness to protect me. After the death of her own kitten, the Chimeric Cougar had redirected all her maternal energy onto the only other kitten nearby. The giant beast kept a constant watch on where I was, tried to always keep me in view. She shared scraps of meat from the Beast Catcher with me. She sniffed me and licked my fur as often as she could. She reacted jealously when Varya picked me up, even growled at her. When the veyer was telling an emotional story and raised his voice not far from me, Darkness ran over instantly and stood between me and the winged boy, baring her teeth and growling furiously at our Thief. This hyper-protectiveness was somewhat… stressful. On the other hand, it was kind of nice to get extra food and have someone to lick the back of my neck clean. It would be far harder to try to change the beast’s mind and explain that I wasn’t her child. Best to let her be. It was no harm.
We’d been traveling all night with only a couple of short stops whenever our Scout didn’t like the look of the road ahead, and urged the megasaurus forward to check it while we waited. Our group stopped only when morning came, and none of us had any strength left. We made camp on the shore of a small, clear lake. The Mechanic and the Engineer quickly cut down some branches and fashioned shelters and beds out of the boughs of firs. In the meantime, Sergeant and Varya collected brushwood and lit a big campfire to warm the group up. The sound of chattering teeth filled the camp, even from the group’s strong leader. Some hot herb tea warmed us up a little more, and then the first rays of the sun over the horizon finally began to chase away the night’s cold.
In Service of the Pharaoh (League of Losers Book #2) Page 26