Alyssa bounded across the rocks with ease, forcing her to regularly wait for Jacob to catch up before she could continue. This was hostile terrain, as they’d recently been reminded, so any amount of separation needed to be decidedly short-ranged and short-lived.
I wonder if I’ve leveled, Alyssa thought as she waited, I’ve been using the skill almost nonstop after all.
Jacob was so unbearably slow at times. He was the kind of guy to look twice before taking every step, and even then only taking it slowly to make sure the ground wouldn’t give out under his weight. If she didn’t absolutely need his firepower for this particular hunt, she would have rather just left him behind.
If Oliver is getting metal, would that mean I can get a proper axe?
Proper axes were tricky with the current wood-and-stone, or rather reed-and-stone tech level they were currently at, and for all that she could use a spear, she'd be much more comfortable with something a bit more versatile... and stronger.
The stone age tools they had were basically useless, in her estimation. Obviously they were better than literally nothing, because reach, but that was basically all that they did provide. She didn’t need something crazy fancy, or even something as good as the multipurpose axe she’d brought on the Jump, just something properly strengthened and with a couple of decent enchantment types, like recall or hide-penetration. She should not need backup for an animal merely twice her height, yet here she was.
Fortunately, it looked like they were getting fairly close to where she encountered the droopnose last time. Given how much metal Oliver said he’d need, the thing’s helmet-ridge-crest things should be plenty for him.
Unless they were only surface level copper, but that seemed unlikely. Nearly solid metal was a lot more common for creatures than a mere surface coating. Not that it didn’t happen – certain species of dragon came to mind – but in almost all of those instances, it was because the metal was but the outer layer of a more complex defense. Not that she’d seen enough of the creatures around here to say for sure, but this section of wilderness felt less… extreme than a lot of the nature she was used to.
It was probably just selection bias, though. Most wilderness that she'd visited back home and on connected worlds had been visited specifically because it was so extreme. And, she supposed, there were patches of 'wilderness' that didn't really feel like it because there wasn't anything more dangerous than a bear that lived in it. That kind of wilderness was all over the place, but she'd always assumed that was just... because it had been pacified?
Regardless, less extreme wilderness meant less sophisticated defenses, meaning that if the defensive body parts of an animal registered as metal, it was probably solid metal, and thereby should work quite well for what Oliver needed.
Copper was a good metal for that stuff, right? She was pretty sure it was.
Jacob had caught up with her again, and Alyssa bounded ahead a bit further, coming to a stop at the base of a small waterfall with eyes narrowed.
Yeah, this was the place. Last time she was headed out this way, this was exactly where she’d run into the droopnose, so this was almost certainly its territory. From here, she’d just need to track it down, they’d kill it and they’d be on their way. Easy-peasy.
“Right up here!” she called back, getting only a distracted wave in response. Seriously, what was with that guy? He’d happily charge headlong at a beast five times his size, if the videos she’d seen were accurate, but he was worried about slipping on rocks?
With a jump between a couple of large-ish rocks and a bounce off the base of a scraggly tree, Alyssa found herself at the top of the waterfall, this time without a giant droopnose right next to her.
Jacob was slowly picking his way up the slight rise, and Alyssa distracted herself by climbing the scraggly tree to see if she could spot the droopnose anywhere nearby. She couldn’t, unfortunately. Even if this particular area was light woodland, there was enough undulation in the terrain that she couldn’t see that far without something being in the way.
“Come on, already!” she called back.
“This is not a simple matter,” Jacob responded.
“Ugh. Fine,” Alyssa jumped down from the treetop and came over to where Jacob was. He was, unsurprisingly, at the base of the waterfall, cautiously assessing the small rock wall before him.
“It’s ten feet,” she protested. “Come on. I can lay on my stomach and pull you up, if you need me to.”
“I can manage. This is not so challenging as to require I get asistance.”
“But you just– gah. Right there. See that? Put your foot there, then grab there, put your other foot on that ledge, then you’ll be able to grab the tree trunk and pull yourself up.”
Jacob looked at her and brandished his sword in a clear question.
“What about it? Just sheathe it. Or toss it up here. Don’t tell me you can’t let it go for literally thirty seconds.”
“I prefer being properly armed in hostile territory.”
“But you’re fine spending an hour just hanging around in the open while you figure out how to get up?”
“I can manage just fine, I assure you.”
“Oh, for the love of-” Alyssa sighed. “Do you need me to come down and boost you up or something?”
“If your concern lies with our surroundings, you ought to be vigilant as you wait.”
“I don’t care about it,” Alyssa retorted, “but I figure you do, so just come on already and get up here.”
“The concern is noted. However, it is not necessary.”
“Then just get up,” Alyssa found herself cut off as Jacob just jumped up to the top, in a single leap. He didn’t quite make it, his shins striking the edge of the rock and sending him into a bit of a stumble, but he was nonetheless up.
The action overall left her somewhat flabbergasted, “But… if you could do that, then why didn’t you…”
“I was under the impression you wanted to keep moving. Was that incorrect?”
“No, but-”
“Lead on, fearless Ranger.”
Alyssa grumbled.
Awkwardly, she realized she didn’t know exactly which way they wanted to go, so she bent down such that she could run her fingers across the moss covering the ground. Everything left minor traces of itself imprinted in the mana around them, and beasts like the droopnose were no exception. Without a Beast class herself, she couldn’t get much information about the type of creature, but there was only one Beast trail she could feel in the moss that was entwined with Metal. Weirdly, there might have been one with Fire, but that was a curiosity for another day.
“That way,” she confidently pointed in the direction the trail was strongest. Now that she had a general feel for it, she could follow the imprint with just her bare feet. None of them had anything akin to shoes yet, but out of all of them Alyssa was least bothered by that issue.
[Leafstep] combined admirably with her base stats in Resistance and Resistance (physical), to the point where she had toyed with the idea of just going barefoot permanently. The toying wasn’t that serious, admittedly. Shoes were just too useful for how minimal of an investment they were, but it was fun to think about.
Especially when Jacob was still being slow. She could scream.
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It took what felt like forever, but eventually Alyssa managed to lead them to where the droopnose’s trail seemed to generally terminate. If she was to guess, its lair or nest or whatever was nearby, because this entire area was so thick with its trails she couldn’t tell what came from where anymore.
The area itself was strewn with lots of boulders – and actually boulders, she’d already checked the closest ones to make sure they weren’t just disguised droopnoses – making it visually difficult to tell whether their prey was present.
“Do you hear anything?” she asked Jacob. He also had a Metal-based class, after all, and with his mana sense based off of hearing, he had much better range when it came to sensing his element.
“Faintly,” he replied, his eyes fixed on a random point in the distance while he listened for more metal.
“Over there,” he indicated towards roughly a third of the way out of the rubble-field with his sword.
Alyssa hopped along the strewn-about boulders in the direction he’d pointed, eventually coming to a stop when she noticed something odd. Namely, that one of the smaller boulders beneath her was breathing.
She stopped and narrowed her eyes, looking around for other irregularities, and quickly spotted that a second boulder was surrounded by disturbed rocks, as though the central rock had pushed the others out of the way. Also, neither of the two rocks she was looking at – both of which were a bit bigger than she would be, were she coiled up, had any particular degree of moss or lichen growth on them, like the others.
Well well well, she thought.
“I think we found some baby droopnoses,” she told Jacob once he caught up with her, hiding a smile.
“That’s rather convenient. Do you suppose they’ll also have the metal crests?”
“But…” Alyssa blinked, “They’re babies?”
“We don’t know enough about their life cycle to know when they get that metal crest. If it’s large enough, we may not even need to deal with the parent.”
“But…” Alyssa protested the suggestion, “They’re babies. We don’t have to kill them.”
Jacob turned to her with an incredulous look, “Is that your objection? Did you think we were just going to walk off with a giant chunk of metal from their face and they’d survive?”
“Obviously not,” she waved off, “But it’s different when you’re hunting an adult, you know?”
“Not truly,” Jacob countered. “Dead is dead. Besides, now that we know it has young, killing the parent is just going to kill the babies. If they’re hiding here without the parent, they aren’t old enough to take care of themselves. Hunting the young isn’t any different, except it means we get to come back here for the parent at some point if the young don’t give enough metal, and we can use their bodies too.”
“I…” Alyssa sighed, “I guess you’re right. I don’t like it though.”
“Noted,” Jacob replied with a tone that he’d previously only reserved for Clark. “Now, shall we continue whispering on the other side of the rock or are we actually going to do our jobs?”
“They’re all yours,” she motioned.
With the practiced grace of a killer and all trace of his normal hesitancy gone, Jacob one-handed vaulted over the boulder they were next to, bringing his blade around. Alyssa heard a slight crunching sound accompanied by a snikt, and she winced. A moment later, the acrid tang of blood filled the air, as did a piteous squeal and the sound of clacking rocks.
Alyssa hopped up on top of the boulder to see the second droopnose youngling attempting to flee, sending rocks flying as it scrambled across the debris field. It didn’t look quite as much like a rock now, so it must have previously had some kind of illusion disguising it.
In either case, she wasn’t about to let the six-legged beast get away, and she jumped from her boulder onto her prey, driving her spear into its shoulder.
The sudden weight and injury combined to drive the creature into the ground, and in doing so threw Alyssa off its back. She managed to avoid an undignified sprawl through quick usage of [Leafstep], but that left the droopnose theoretically able to escape. Not that Jacob would give it the chance. His sword plunged into the droopnose’s body, and then it was still.
With the momentary chaos behind them, Alyssa returned to where the two freshly-slain bodies were strewn out on the ground, reclaimed her spear, and used that to nudge its face into proper view.
“Well, that’s good,” she noted. If anything, it had way more metal on a per-size basis than the adult did. It was less tarnished too, and Alyssa found herself looking at a remarkably complete copper helmet-mask-thing completely hiding the droopnose’s eponymous organ.
“We each take one and head back to camp?” Alyssa prompted. She wasn’t about to mourn for the creature. It had been a living creature, yes, but they needed it, and ultimately any living creature that wasn’t human was second priority. There were no tears shed for the fish they’d been eating, there’d be no tears shed for the baby droopnose, even if its downy feathers were very soft.
Jacob replied with some largely-unintelligible affirmative as he slung the first droopnose over his shoulder. Alyssa wasn’t quite strong enough to do the same, but after a few moments of adjustment, she managed to get the carcass draped over her back.
[Leafstep] didn’t work as well when she was this heavily laden, so their return trip was substantially slower than their way out. So what if she couldn’t use her class’s main skill, it just meant she was louder, slower, and had to deal with a few more thorns trying to bury themselves into her foot than she had to deal with on the way out.
They’d made it most of the way back to the creek when they heard a ferocious bellow back where they’d just been. Without needing to say anything, Alyssa and Jacob made eye contact and immediately started running as fast as they possibly could. [Leafstep] was pushed to its absolute limits, as Alyssa pushed as much mana as she possibly could through the skill just to keep it active.
Usually her use of the skill came with almost no mana cost, but that was because she was good at using it, and she was light enough on her feet that it didn’t take much out of her. Then combine that with the way this world seemed to boost her mana generation something fierce, and she could keep it running constantly even at level 0 with a level 1 skill. But now, with a one or two-hundred pound carcass on her back, she was anything but light on her feet.
She couldn’t keep this up indefinitely by any means, but she didn’t need to keep it up forever, just long enough to get far away from the undoubtedly very angry droopnose.
Her mana first gave out as a loose rock skittered away from her foot plowing into it, and the sudden lack of support on an already-overextended limb sent her sprawling. She barely managed to catch herself from plowing face-first into a tree branch by dropping her hold on her baby droopnose, but while that broke her fall initially it didn’t stop her from being fully driven into the ground a moment later when momentum slammed the carcass into her back.
Jacob skidded to a stop next to her, breathing heavily but still upright. His face clearly asked if she was alright, and she choked out a response.
“Mfine,” she mumbled, only to feel a trickle of blood running down her face from what was certainly a broken nose. “Jus’ needa minute.”
Jacob cast a look back in the direction they’d come from, “I have not heard anything from that direction in a while, we might be safe?”
Alyssa shook her head, trying to dab back the blood with the side of her finger and failing utterly. “Defnaly no’ safe. Bah, sdubid node.”
There wasn’t any moss nearby, so Alyssa decided she’d just have to let it be. With a moment to recoup her bruised body and pride, she slung her droopnose back over her shoulders and set off once again.
Despite their fears, the two of them did manage to make it back to the camp without incident. Or more specifically, the cliff above the camp. Normally, the two were functionally the same, but with Alyssa’s mana still wrung out from her sprint earlier, getting down was going to be a lot tricker.
“I feel like I’be made a mistake,” she mused. Jacob, fortunately, didn’t say anything, so she carried on after setting her carcass down. “Should we throw something down? Get their attention that way?”
“Throw something down a five hundred foot drop? We could kill one of them with anything large enough to actually get their attention.”
“Into the pond then? Nobody ever goes swimming into it, and the splash would definitely get their attention.”
“It remains too much of a risk. It would be better for us to wait here until your mana fully recovers and you are able to make it to the bottom safely.”
“Generation is one of my minors,” she countered. “I might not be fully recovered until tomorrow. But if you don’t want to drop something, I’ll just start climbing down. I think I’ve got enough mana to land eh, a dozen or so times at least?”
“Absolutely not. That would leave you climbing nearly half the distance, and be far too hazardous for the rest. We can simply sit here and wait.”
Alyssa looked over the cliff face. It was the sort of drop that she’d landed effortlessly so many times before, but here and now she was just too weak to make it work.
Level resets are the worst.
The rocky cliff plunged downwards, a few wisps of clouds obscuring their camp just enough that she couldn’t quite tell whether or not anyone was out of the shelter. Well, Henrietta probably would be because she tended to sit perched on top of the shelter, but she couldn’t tell if Clark or Oliver were out and about.
She paced along the cliff, trying to get a better view. The pond, apparently, was half tucked underneath the cliff. Weirdly, the waterfall they got their water from didn’t have a creek corresponding to it all the way up here. Idly, she wondered where it was coming from, but that would be easy enough to find out at some point.
Jacob had set his own droopnose down and was settling in for a longer wait a bit of a ways from the edge. After thinking for a moment, and when he wasn’t paying super close attention to her, she picked up her droopnose, hauled it to the edge, and dropped it.
That got his attention, but it was already too late. “Ride!”
“M’not waiting that long,” she shrugged, cutting off whatever berating he’d planned.
A few seconds later, the faint sound of an absolutely massive splash reached the clifftop where they were at, and Jacob sagged.
A mere couple of minutes later, rather than hours, a new person joined them, carried on semiwyvernic wings of ink.
“I think you dropped something,” Henrietta informed them.
Alyssa smirked.
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