With a sour feeling, he set out, moving toward the western part of the island, where he’d fought the herald. After arriving in the vicinity, he dumped the bodies and tried to stage the area to look like it had happened there. He wasn’t too optimistic that he’d fool anyone, though, but he didn’t want to waste time with burying them. They’d know the party was dead one way or another soon anyway, and he hoped to move their attention to this part of the island.
The corpses were left on the ground without any of their gear and weapons, as it had all been pilfered by Zac.
Done with the task, he set out again, this time heading for the mountain.
43
Stone Monkeys
Zac moved through the forest with determination. He felt that he couldn’t look around for information or clues anymore. He simply couldn’t find the last herald, and he was making no headway regarding the general either.
The general was likely holed up in the city, and the last herald either stayed in the cave or in the city as well. He had traversed the whole island while grinding for his quest skills, and hadn’t even seen a trace of the alpha beast. The city and the cave were the last two options that he could come up with.
He needed to progress his quests, and the monkey mountain was the only way he could, as he saw it. The other option was entering the cave, but he felt it was too risky for now. There was a lot of foot traffic to and from that cave, and it seemed they placed great importance on it. He had no idea of the topography inside either, meaning he might be stuck in a large cave with no other exits.
The mountain was a safer bet. While it was somewhat close to demon activity, the cave was located at the foot of the mountain towards the southeast. If he kept his activities to the western part and the central area of the mountain, he should be able to act unconstrained without any demons noticing. That was as long as another war party didn’t happen upon him, of course.
But the mountain sported complicated terrain with a multitude of outcroppings, caves, and paths, making it convenient to escape even if he was found out.
He soon arrived at the mountain and stealthily started making his way forward, looking for targets. He was planning on thinning the herd for a few days while looking for the monkey king. Since the stone monkeys had a strong sense of camaraderie, he was afraid that the monkey herald would be able to summon hundreds of monkeys with a shout.
But if those animals were already dead, he’d be able to fight the boss without any interruptions. He had already seen that no reinforcements came through the crystal, so every monkey he killed was one less to worry about in the future.
There were a lot of monkeys on the mountain, but nowhere near the seemingly endless number of barghest that were skulking in the forest. He soon found a group of roughly fifty monkeys that sat huddled together and seemed to be sunbathing. They were completely immobile and staring up at the sky. It was a group like this that had almost ended Zac’s life just days before.
Zac didn’t prepare any tricks or traps for this fight, and after a quick survey to make sure another group was not in the vicinity, he charged into the pack. He charged up [Chop] through the fractal in his hand to the limit of what he could control, and with a great arc decimated three monkeys with one swing. Apart from being a good skill for surprise attacks, it also was excellent when fighting large groups of weaker prey.
Between the haft and the elongated blade of his skill, he had a far greater reach compared to a normal axe wielder, and everything within two and a half meters of him was a zone of death. Enraged screams erupted from the pack of monkeys, and they started to frenziedly throw themselves at him.
This time, he wasn’t in as dire straits as the last. His Strength and Endurance had increased considerably, and the skills increased his efficiency against large packs of enemies. Last time, he often wasn’t able to completely kill a monkey with a swing, only managing to hurt or maim it. But with [Axe Mastery], he’d learned better ways to handle his weapon, and with [Chop], he managed to hit more targets at once.
He was like a harvester cutting down his crops, as with every swing, a few monkeys perished. The rock plating on their bodies offered almost no protection against Zac’s inhumanly powerful swings, and rock chips and body parts kept flying in all directions.
The battle only lasted for a minute, but almost every monkey died. Terrified by the onslaught, some of the smarter monkeys had desperately fled when Zac had killed half of the pack. Zac couldn’t be bothered with hunting them down, as he was quite exhausted and panting. The fight had been fast, but it also had been furious. Keeping his [Chop] skill active at maximum capacity for a whole minute also drained him of a lot of his Cosmic Energy.
Exhausting himself had been worth it, though, as the fight gave him another level. Of course, he had been quite close to leveling up already before the battle. Zac pulled up his status screen to allocate his points while he moved away from the battle.
He quickly allocated two points in Endurance and one in Strength, but as he was about to close the status screen, he noticed that all his stats had improved again after the allocation. He quickly stopped and took another look to see what changed.
Name: Zachary Atwood
Level: 29
Class: [F-Rare] Hatchetman
Race: [F] Human
Alignment: [Earth] Human
Titles: Born for Carnage, Ultimate Reaper, Luck of the Draw, Giantsbane, Disciple of David, Overpowered, Slayer of Leviathans, Adventurer, Demon Slayer, Full of Class, Rarified Being, Trailblazer, Child of Dao, The Big 500
Dao: Seed of Heaviness – Early
Strength: 145
Dexterity: 59
Endurance: 84
Vitality: 69
Intelligence: 49
Wisdom: 49
Luck: 67
Free Points: 0
Nexus Coins: 157,096
He had once more gained another title, this one called The Big 500. He focused on it, and a prompt explaining the title appeared.
[The Big 500: First in world to reach 500 total attributes. All stats +2]
And the strong get stronger, Zac thought wryly. It seemed somewhat unfair that the System rewarded those with the most attributes with even more attributes, but no one said that the System was fair.
Just look at how it sent the talented people to some Tutorial, deeming the rest as trash and leaving them here to fend for themselves.
It wasn’t a large boost, but it did cheer Zac up after the Child of Dao title. It also reminded him of his strong points. He might not be as smart and talented as others, and he might not be able to cultivate. But even if the cultivators came back with a bunch of skills and knowledge, he could still beat them up with his pile of attributes if needed.
He found a secluded spot between a mountain wall and some bushes and sat down to recuperate. With the assistance of the mother-daughter array and a Nexus Crystal, it only took him forty-five minutes to restore his Cosmic Energy to its peak. He felt the pinch when using a crystal for recuperation instead of cultivation, but he didn’t want to waste any time so close to enemy territory. A crystal lasted for roughly two hours, so his reserve of crystals would be enough to keep a breakneck grinding pace for weeks if needed.
As soon as he was topped off on energy, he kept looking for the next group. He didn’t dare look while recuperating, as he never knew when he’d be stuck in an avalanche of monkeys. Soon he found another gathering of the beasts, this one slightly larger than the last. He didn’t know if these groupings were families or packs, but he was thankful that they were spaced out a bit in this manner.
After another recon of the surroundings, he once again started a slaughter. There was not much of a difference between this fight and the last, and it soon ended. He was a bit worse for wear, but the blunt hits from their stone fists did not impact his body overly much. He had over 80 Endurance by now, and he gauged the monkeys’ Strength to be somewhere in the 60s. They still hurt, but it would take some while for him
to take actual damage.
The only real dangers the monkeys could muster up was either from their sharp teeth or from simply tiring him to death with numbers. But with the reach of his weapon infused with [Chop], no monkey maw really managed to get close to him, and he carefully checked the surroundings before every fight for hidden backups.
Zac kept this rotation between fighting and resting going, slowly making his way toward the central area of the mountain. Zac figured the herald should be somewhere on one of the peaks. Unfortunately, the mountain had a number of peaks rather than just one, so he was planning on checking them one by one and killing the monkeys in between.
Zac had already known grinding monkeys would be lucrative, as each monkey gave almost as much Cosmic Energy and Nexus Coins as four barghest. But with his improved stats and skills, his grind speed skyrocketed, shocking even himself. As the suns set, Zac finished up his last battle for the day, which had actually rewarded him a second level, bringing him to level 30.
Done with the fighting for now, he retreated to a small cave he’d found while traversing the mountain paths. It was secluded and seemed to have once housed a bear or some similar animal from the shed fur in the corners. But from the dust gathered, it seemed that no one had been here for weeks.
Zac guessed that this cave had been moved here with its inhabitant from wherever this mountain came from, and that the stone monkeys killed the bear when it ventured out for food.
The cave wasn’t huge but provided Zac with sufficient space to practice using the [Axe Mastery] guidance system before he finally sat down and rested. He also spent over an hour on trying to gain another Dao Seed. He was trying to actualize the other aspect he had sensed the strongest from his Dao vision, sharpness. If he got another Dao Seed, he would gain another power-up and speed up his farming even more.
But no matter what he did or how, he couldn’t take even one step on the path. When he had tried to imagine the one for heaviness, it went very smoothly, and he couldn’t quite figure out why the difference in difficulty was so huge. He could only speculate that he either simply had no talent for the Dao of Sharpness, or that the System restricted Dao Seeds somehow.
Perhaps the skill could only reward him with one Dao Seed. If he wanted more, he had to work on it by himself by arduously practicing and meditating on it. He knew that it would likely have taken him years to figure out the feeling for the Dao of Heaviness if it weren’t for the vision essentially imprinting the Dao in his mind. He more and more realized the value of that vision as he kept trying to meditate on the Dao by himself.
Finally, he gave up and called it a day. But he would dedicate some time every day for meditation as well, he decided. At least until someone told him it was a waste of time. It had been a long day, and Zac was exhausted. He wiped his sweat and then crept into a small crevice that secluded him even further, and fell into a deep slumber.
44
Peak
Zac woke up just at dawn and decided to meditate briefly before getting ready. He wasn’t sure whether it helped him gain insight and progress his Dao Seed, or helped gain a new one. Even so, he felt it was a worthwhile endeavor. He was starting to get worried about his psyche. He had bathed in blood and battle constantly for weeks, and it had taken its toll. He felt he’d almost shut off all his emotions as a coping mechanism to not go insane, but it wasn’t a permanent solution.
He needed to adjust his state of mind to be able to endure. He knew that even if he survived the island, his life wouldn’t likely change much. He still had to defend his island from new invaders for three months even if he managed to kick out the demons. At least if he understood his quest Incursion Master correctly.
Incursion Master (Unique): Close or conquer incursion and protect outpost from denizens of other alignments for 3 months. Reward: 5 E-Grade Nexus Crystals, outpost upgraded to town, status upgraded to Lord. (0/3)
Since the quest still hadn’t progressed after over a month, he believed it would start up as soon as the demons and the incursion were dealt with. If it meant that he only needed to worry about the critters on the island for three months afterwards, then everything would be well and good. But Zac held no hope that the System would be so nice about it and would likely send some trouble his way.
As he was looking through his quest panel, he also noticed that the Forester’s Constitution quest unfortunately hadn’t progressed from his day of battling monkeys. There were some solitary trees rooted on the cliffs, but it seemed the System made a clear distinction between a mountain next to a forest and a forest.
He closed the menus and silently stared out over the tranquil view. The mountains were quite a bit calmer compared to the forest, as the stone monkeys didn’t have the tendency to incessantly roar like the barghest did. It almost felt like he was just camping again, which made him think about Hannah.
To be honest, he hadn’t really been thinking about her and the others a lot lately, as he was focused on surviving and getting stronger. As he was reminiscing about her, he realized he had missed an important clue about the Tutorial. The four of them hadn’t returned to his camp after the monthlong Tutorial had ended. He hadn’t reflected on it at the time, his mind occupied with the newly arrived demons and his class acquisition.
As he saw it, that could have two reasons. First, they were all dead, and the System didn’t bother to teleport back corpses. Second, after finishing the Tutorial, they were not teleported back from where they were snatched up, but somewhere else. Perhaps to human settlements or the like.
He could only pray it was the second reason. He wondered if they were looking for him, or if they just assumed he died. Had Hannah moved on?
Zac sighed and looked out at the sunrise. What obligations did he have to a new girlfriend when the apocalypse came? They had only been together for a few months when the world was integrated into the Multiverse. And even if he managed to find her again, it would likely take a long time. Could they still even be considered a couple? He couldn’t find any easy answers and simply tabled the matter.
There were monkeys to kill.
He ate a quick breakfast and headed out. Today, he was planning on scaling one of the peaks to look for the herald. As he traversed the mountain, he made an intriguing discovery. The further up he climbed, the more concentrated the Cosmic Energy felt.
He was clueless if it was related to altitude or if something about the mountains themselves caused the phenomena. But he realized that it might be very valuable in the future. He wasn’t a cultivator, but even he felt invigorated by the density of Cosmic Energy in the surroundings.
Perhaps he could rent out the mountains to cultivators in the future at exorbitant rates. He could only assume that cultivating in this kind of environment would be far more effective compared to doing it in a place with a normal density of energy. It could be a great source of income if he got a town up and running in the future. There was something about the thought of becoming a post-apocalyptic slumlord that gave him a comforting sense of normalcy.
Zac spent half the day killing monkey packs and scaling the closest peak, with his efficiency in monkey dismantling starting to reach a sublime level. There were some surprises when unexpected backup that Zac had missed entered the fray, but it generally only resulted in more Nexus Coins for himself. The scariest moment was when a monkey somehow managed to sneak up on him, biting him in his inner loin. Just slightly to the left and the monkey would have eaten his precious jewels.
He reached the peak at midday and, after a brief survey, could conclude that this peak wasn’t the home of the herald. The air felt quite fresh up here, and Zac decided to have his dinner with a view. He sat down between some rocks to look more inconspicuous and retrieved some fruit and dried meat from his pouch.
His experiments with food and the pouch was a great success. Everything he put inside kept even better compared to a refrigerator, the fruits and slabs of meat still looking pristine after over a week. He didn’t dare start a fi
re for some barbeque this close to the demon town, though, so he could only stick to his dried rations.
As he ate, he looked over the mountain range. His view from the peak afforded him a unique vantage, and he made some new discoveries.
There were a total of five real peaks, of which he sat on the westernmost. The peak he occupied was slightly off on its own, whereas the other four were a bit more clumped together.
Between the four peaks, there seemed to be a secluded valley that wasn’t visible from down below, as it was located a few hundred meters above sea level. The mountain range itself had some sparse vegetation, such as some windswept shrubbery and small trees, but the valley seemed quite lush with an abundance of leafy growth. Zac even thought he could discern a small pond or lake but couldn’t be sure, as a large part of the valley was covered in mist.
The valley certainly looked intriguing, like a secret little paradise hidden from sight. If he was on a treasure hunt, he’d bet all his doubloons that any riches the island had to offer were hidden there.
More importantly, it also seemed like a good resting place for a herald.
The only thing making him unsure was the fact that the monkeys seemed to like the rocky outcroppings and cliffs of the mountain. It would be a bit odd if their leader preferred to stay in a forest instead.
The great elevation also allowed him to finally confirm that he was indeed on an island. He hadn’t been able to see anything behind the mountain range before, and knew there might have been land on the other side as well. But steep cliffs gave way to the ocean at the end of the mountain range, looking almost as though the mountain had been sliced clean off. Perhaps the System simply had chopped off part of a larger mountain range and slapped it onto the edge of the island. It was quite the sight, with a drop of at least a hundred meters down into the waters below.
Defiance of the Fall: A LitRPG Adventure Page 23