Duskbound

Fetching the remains of his spear out of the monster's ruined eye was Velik's first task. Unfortunately, the phantasmal shaft he'd constructed out of [Phalanx] had shattered into motes of light, leaving the tangible, physical portion buried out of sight. That was why, after drinking another healing potion, he was standing on the dead wolf's face with one arm buried up to the shoulder in gore while he blindly groped for the weapon.

Thank Morgus this shirt has [Mending] on it. It would never come clean without that.

His hand brushed against something hard and slender enough to wrap his fingers around. With a sickening squelch, he pulled on it and slowly retracted the spear. Its shaft was even more battered, probably six inches shorter from all the chunks of wood that had broken loose. The head was still in good-shape, albeit dyed black with monster blood.

This, on the other hand, might never recover, even with [Mending].

Velik didn't have the decarmas to replace the spear, and he was days away from anything remotely resembling safety. [Phalanx] was his only defense, and while he was confident that he could kill monsters around his level with the skill, taking on elites was another story entirely. It would be faster to slink back home, run all the way down to the city, fence the champion seeds he already had, buy a new spear, and run all the way back out here than it would be to try to kill enough monsters to earn the decarmas himself.

He hoped it wouldn't come down to that. Velik hopped down, gave the wolf one last, searching look, and strode away to find the other half of his spear. He lined them up together, lined a straight stick up at the break, and used a ragged strip of cloth to tie them all together. Given how fast [Mending] normally worked, he figured he'd know if it was working in an hour or two. It'd probably take a full day to actually repair the damage, but he'd feel a lot better just knowing that the magic could fix things.

In the meantime, he rested his back against a tree and looked at the champion seed he'd taken from the wolf. The words of the system message raised more questions, but gave nothing in the way of answers.

[Champion Seed: Used to grow a champion elite monster to guard a specified location. Requires mana to flourish.]

[Champion: Velik the Black Fang (level 44).]

[Current Owner: Velik]

[Current Reserve: 0/270]

What does it mean? Does Chalin create the champions and name them? Did he name this one after me? And why does it have my class as part of its name? That can't be a coincidence. It definitely used two of my class skills in our fight.

"Morgus's hairy balls, that's a big wolf," a voice said from fifty feet away.

Seriously? Where were you ten minutes ago? Velik mentally demanded. He glanced up and saw Torwin standing there, his bow held next to him and his other hand on his hip. Frowning, he peered at the corpse and said, "Level 44? How the hell did you ever kill that?"

"Obstinance and luck, mostly," Velik said. He pulled himself back to his feet. "I was kind of hoping you'd show up and help."

"I would have if I'd known you were fighting something like this. I figured I was pretty close when the compass shifted directions, and I wanted to see what it was that had it wiggling around like a rent girl passing by a freshly docked ship. Followed your tracks the rest of the way in."

"What tracks?" Velik asked blandly. He knew he didn't leave anything as mundane as footprints behind when he walked, not with [Apex Hunter] in his skill roster.

Torwin just winked before turning his attention back to the wolf. "Shame we don't have the time or storage capacity to properly harvest this. Level 44 has got to have some good stuff in it."

"I've never bothered."

"No? Lot of money to leave behind, but then… I suppose you'd have no one to sell any materials to or process them on your behalf, never mind transporting them. Still, something this high a level ought to be worth taking a few things." Torwin circled around the corpse, stopping at the teeth. "Those're interesting. And… uh… that's a big hole in the tongue."

Velik felt Torwin's eyes on him and was suddenly acutely aware that his clothes were soaked in not only blood, but saliva. "I told you, obstinacy and luck."

"So it would seem," Torwin chuckled. "But don't sell yourself short. A kill like this takes a great deal of skill and raw power."

Do I tell him about the name? Would that make him suspicious of me?

If he decided to share, there was no taking it back. For the moment, it was easier to put off making a decision. Torwin had been helpful, but Velik knew better than to trust someone just because they'd had a few kind words and done him a favor or two. He'd learned that lesson a year after the incident when some local boys had started showing up in the woods near the edge of town.

Velik had been starved for human contact, they'd been friendly, and he'd thought he was making progress towards getting the town to accept him again. A week went by, he'd shown up at the usual meeting spot, and two men armed with clubs had been waiting for him. He'd only barely gotten away with his life, and he'd learned to stay far, far away from Deshir that day.

The worst part of it was that, to this day, he still didn't know if those kids had betrayed him or if their families had merely found out they'd been talking to him and decided to correct that behavior. Either way, those two men had almost killed him and Velik had learned a valuable lesson about being vulnerable.

"What are you doing?" Velik asked.

"There's some mana pooled in the teeth. They're good base material for some daggers, maybe a spearhead or a short sword," Torwin explained. He was brandishing a curved knife in one hand while holding the wolf's lip back with the other. "We'd need a full team to harvest something this big, but I can pick up a few of the more valuable and easy to collect pieces, just so the whole thing's not wasted."

"How do you know what parts are valuable? Just something you pick up over time?"

"Partially, but it's also a safe assumption that if the monster has mana in some part of its body, that someone, somewhere, can find a use for it. So when you have an unfamiliar or, in this case, unique monster, you can't go wrong targeting the highest concentrations of mana if you need to be picky about what to take. For this monster, that means the teeth."

He couldn't help but feel a flash of annoyance when he considered how much wealth he'd abandoned over the years. Thousands and thousands of monsters had been left where they'd fallen, food for scavengers. There was no telling how useful some of those monster parts would have been, if he'd known what to take and who could use it. It didn't really matter, he supposed. He had nobody to trade it to.

Something must have shown on his face, because Torwin laughed and said, "Most normal monsters aren't worth much. It's the elites that have the good stuff, and even then, not all of them. Here, come help me and I'll show you how to pop these out without damaging them."

Somewhat mollified, Velik left his bound-together spear on the ground and walked over to the corpse. At Torwin's direction, he held the lip up so the older hunter could use both hands. After watching the knife work required to cut the tooth loose, Velik took a turn at it himself.

"Not as easy as you made it look," he observed after he'd butchered the process.

"That's alright! Nobody gets everything right on the first try. Here, do it again on this one. The smaller ones don't have such deep roots."

* * *

He'd gone to sleep months ago, all too aware that his body needed the rest while his mind was elsewhere. There was always something more to do – new monsters to be made, new people to be corrupted, new territory to be claimed. As long as everything went as planned, it was entirely possible to hibernate through all of the busy work.

Things were not going according to plan. Something was cutting the threads, unraveling the nodes he'd placed to channel his mana through. Territory was shrinking. That needed to be corrected, but he couldn't do that while he slept. His mind had to be called back, had to take control again.

He hated returning to his body. His own flesh repulsed him, the one thing he couldn't shape. No matter how hard he tried, he was trapped in a form he despised. Escaping that prison was all that mattered, and something was preventing him from reaching that goal.

Eyes opened, first one, then two, then twenty. His many arms ceased their autonomous work and heeded his command, becoming still for the first time since his hibernation had started. The animals his body had been working on gasped out desperate, dying breaths, slowly succumbing to the grievous wounds he'd shaped into their flesh. Without his magic actively working to sustain them through the transformations, they couldn't escape their ultimate fate, not that he cared.

He was too distracted to pay attention, too intent on following the severed thread of his favorite creation. Someone had destroyed it, and he needed to know who.