Duskbound

The [Mending] enchantment on the spear wasn't fixing the damage, or if it was, it was doing it far too slowly. Torwin was done cutting everything he wanted to claim off the corpse, and Velik had played along as a way to pass the time. Without the mana sensing skill to help him pick out the important bits, he wouldn't be able to do much harvesting on his own, but a brief search of the system store had revealed a few pieces of gear that could offset his lack of the requisite skill, so the knowledge might be helpful in the future.

But it had been three hours, and checking on his weapon had revealed no change. "Bad luck," Torwin said when Velik excused himself to go see the progress. "That'll be expensive to fix."

"It also means a long, dangerous trip back to a safer stretch of the woods. I'll struggle to kill anything even close to my level without a weapon."

"It's a system store weapon, isn't it?" Torwin asked. "Just feed it the seed you got from this champion? Or any of them, I guess, but the higher the level, the better."

Velik pulled the champion seed out of his bag and studied it. Like all the others, it looked like a literal seed – oblong, hard-shelled, jet black except for a single slash of crimson-red going through it. The color was the only difference from every other one he'd collected. "How does this help?"

It belatedly occurred to him that Torwin had some sort of analyzing skill, and Velik didn't know if it worked on objects as well as people. He didn't need this particular champion's name revealed to the other hunter, and pulling the seed out might have given Torwin a chance to get a good look at it.

Torwin didn't seem to notice. "It's part of why they're so valuable. I thought I explained this already when I took those first two to sell. Enchanters can use them to increase the power of your equipment."

"Right, I remember that, but… how does that help? I'm not an enchanter."

"If it's a system piece, it doesn't matter. The system just needs the raw material and it does the work for you. It's probably one of the biggest advantages to getting your gear directly from the system instead of having someone make it, though it's debatable if it's worth the price tag."

"Then, using this seed on my spear could repair it?" Velik asked.

"And strengthen it at the same time."

"How do I use it?"

The process wasn't all that complicated, or at least Torwin made it seem easy when he explained it. There were some system menus involved, but with the older hunter explaining how to navigate to the spot Velik needed, he was quickly able to use up the champion seed to upgrade his spear.

[Blood Seeker has been infused with the essence of the champion, Velik the Black Fang.]

[Blood Seeker has been upgraded from epic to legendary quality.]

[Blood Seeker has become Harbinger of Dusk.]

Before his eyes, the weapon transformed. Where before the shaft had looked like smooth, dark wood, now it was matte-black metal. The two pieces had twined together, fusing back into one flawless length of – What is this even made of? It's not steel. Too light. Whatever it was, it was solid and strong to Velik's cursory inspection.

More importantly, the weapon had gained more stats, bringing his bonus from 5 physical up to 15 physical and 5 mystic, and it had gained a new enchantment on top of its old ones. Now, it had [Shape Shifting], [Bleeding], [Sharp], [Mending] from before, and [Mana Drinker] as well. The name made it obvious enough what it did – it took mana from anything he could stab it into. What the spear did with that mana wasn't specified, however.

Easy enough to find out, I hope.

"What's [Mana Drinker] do with the mana it takes?" he asked.

Torwin sucked in a sharp breath. "You got [Mana Drinker]?"

"Is that rare?"

"A bit more than that? Must have been a hell of a champion seed you fed to that thing."

It had been both the highest level monster Velik had ever personally seen and a champion elite, so he supposed that qualified. It didn't answer his question, however. "So, what does it do?"

"It's generally used with other enchantments, especially ones that can be fueled by the user. A lot of wands, for example, work by having a spell bonded to them. The wielder feeds mana into the wand, the spell activates. [Mana Drinker] isn't part of that setup because it's rare and expensive, and because it would require you to find some monster with mana to steal, then poke them physically with the wand to get it."

"But poking things with a spear is what it's all about, so I'm good there."

"Right. But if your spear doesn't have an enchantment on it that actually requires an outside source of mana to fuel it, then [Mana drinker] is a lot less useful. It'll still help, don't get me wrong. [Mending] will be able to eat up that excess mana to restore your spear to pristine condition much, much faster. Everything it does now, it'll do better, assuming you're fighting monsters with mana for you to steal."

It sounded situationally useful, at best, but maybe Velik was just underestimating it. The important part, to him, was that the infusion of power from the champion seed has repaired the damage, and the upgraded stats didn't hurt either. With another five or six hours until dawn, he might be able to find and kill the next champion.

There can't be that many more of these things left. Between the two of us, we've killed close to a dozen.

"Don't underestimate how powerful [Mana Drinker] is. Even if you don't have a good enchantment to funnel the mana into, just stealing from a target is a huge handicap for them. This giant wolf, for example, is so big that I can almost guarantee it needed magic just to keep it moving around. If you'd been able to attack its mana, you could have slowed it down, probably stopped it from using some abilities like whatever it did to that one tree over there with the burns all over it. It would have been a much easier fight."

"That's good," Velik said. "I hope I don't encounter anything this strong again, but you never know. There's at least one more champion out there."

"Or this might be the last one. Maybe all that's left is whatever's behind them," Torwin argued. "That would be nice. Even if we killed it tonight, there's still weeks or even months of clean up left to do in this region."

"You're sticking around for that?" Velik asked, surprised. He'd expected the professional monster hunters to clear out once they'd destroyed the source of the infestation.

"Job's not done until all the monsters are gone."

"I don't think you'll ever leave if you want to kill all of them. I've been trying to do that for years. There were times when I'd go weeks without seeing another one, but they always come back."

"The big ones need to be killed, at least. Anything over level 20 is too much of a threat, and all the elites need to be killed. I have a suspicion this is going to be a long job, and probably one that's going to require more than just me and my apprentice to finish."

Velik could scarcely imagine a world in which no monsters roamed the forests of the frontier. What would I even do with my life? Go somewhere else, I guess. And then do what?

"Well, I've got another hour or two before I call it a night, and I suppose you've got until the sun comes back up. Shall we see what's next in the chain?" Torwin asked.

"I suppose that would be a good idea," Velik replied, brandishing his newly improved spear. He couldn't wait to see how it did in battle.

* * *

This druid girl, Sildra, was alright in a fight, but not reliable. At first, Jensen had tried to treat her like an ally, but he'd quickly realized that was putting too much trust in her capabilities. It was obvious that she'd had no training. She got distracted easily, couldn't focus on multiple monsters at a time, and couldn't handle watching his flank for him.

It was easier to use solo tactics, even if they weren't necessarily the most efficient way to go about the hunt, than it was to try to explain to her what he needed her to do. It wasn't that she was stupid. She just didn't have the training to pull her weight. So instead, he mostly just pretended she wasn't there, and if she incidentally killed a few monsters, well, that made his job a bit easier.

That was the theory, at least. In truth, she'd gotten in trouble a few times, fights that maybe she could have managed to extricate herself from, but maybe not. Either way, he'd given her some support, she'd thanked him afterwards, and they'd continued on in the same manner.

"Excuse me, sir," one of the loggers he'd been protecting from monstrous aggression said. "Not really my place to ask, but what level are you? You wiped those monsters out like it was nothing."

"Eh? Level?" Jensen considered the question. It was kind of rude, maybe not as bad as using something like [Identify] on a person, but still… Screw it. He's not trying to be rude; he just doesn't know any better. "19."

"Wow, really? I'm level 17 and I couldn't come close to doing what you did."

"Well, I'm sure you'd chop down a tree in half the time it'd take me," Jensen told him. He glanced back at the closest monster corpse, riddled with arrow wounds, though most of the arrows had already faded into nothingness, and saw that Sildra had already walked away. She was nowhere in sight, but her tracks were plainly visible. "Sorry, I need to go catch up to my, uh, partner."

Without waiting for the logger to reply, he hurried off.

* * *

Level 19? Those two can't be the only ones. Who else is out here with you?