Book 3: Chapter 6 : This One’s For Gnashing

  The forest’s noon lighting gave off the sort of green hue that poets back on earth wrote as “emerald”, showing to anyone who managed to see such phenomenon first-hand that none of these poets—whoever they may be—had ever actually been to a forest. Everything around Alex and the team was vibrant in color, yet also wet, damp. It wasn’t the pleasant post-rain kind of wet either, oh no, this was the sort of surface-slicked, mossy dampness that seeped into the socks, gear, and morale of each person forced to endure it.

  The caravan had paused for a break, seemingly to rest the draft beasts, but more likely because one of the merchant captains had spilled hot tea on his own crotch and needed to bathe and change to hide such embarrassing evidence. Either way, the Worldstriders found themselves briefly un-tasked and slightly bored.

  Which, as it turned out, was dangerous for the wildlife.

  Henry crouched low near a patch of trampled underbrush, one hand skimming along the deep crescent-shaped indentations they had discovered in the mud. His brow furrowed the way it always did when he was thinking, or regretting talking to Garret, or when—well it was a lot of things actually, Henry was usually frowning. But in this instance, Alex knew it meant trouble.

  “Boar. Big one. Not normal,” he muttered.

  Alex stepped up beside him, eyes glowing faintly as he activated his [Aether Sight]. The world shifted, the colors of the forest pulled back into layers of blue aether with tinted-hues of varying elemental colors, along with swirling patterns of power, like a topographical map of subtle vibrations. And in the distance, he could make out a faint trail, a fading residue of something heavy, and mildly annoyed.

  “Gaseous-stage Adept, nearing Liquid-Stage. Earth-attuned. That’s not just a big boar. That’s a big boi boar,” he said.

  “Neat,” Garret added, already unwrapping a brick of bread and taking a bite of the hardened contents. “So, we’re hunting it?” Crumbles flew everywhere as he spoke.

  “No,” said Tom-Tom from behind a shrub. “We ignore it and survive to see dinner.”

  Alex glanced toward the Kobold, who had somehow merged with the undergrowth like a nervous garden gnome. Only the gleam of his pot-helmet gave him away.

  “You’re usually excited about fighting,” Alex noted, his eyebrow arching in suspicion.

  “Not when monster is Adept beast, making Tom-Tom dinner instead,” Tom-Tom hissed. “Big monsters are fine. When Tom-Tom looking from behind wall. Wall made of metal, and maybe slower kobolds.”

  Despite Tom-Toms complaints, Henry had already begun moving, low and steady through the brush like a jungle cat. His large form moving in a rather impressive display of muscle and military training.

  Alex sighed. “Well, guess we’re doing this then. Stick close Tom-Tom, it’ll be alright”

  He motioned to the rest of the team, who began falling in without complaint, but Allie gave a long-suffering groan regardless, and Lance muttered something about “more bacon, fewer broken ribs,” but both moved anyway.

  As they followed the beast’s trail, moving over toppled roots, under bent branches, and around a tree that someone (probably the boar) had decided to uproot and throw for reasons incomprehensible to their simple human minds, Obby stirred in Alex’s mind. “So… let me get this straight,” the enchanted pebble’s voice oozed amusement in his head. “You’re going to attempt to kill and eat a creature that is not only sentient-adjacent, but also gives every indication that it is powerful enough to punt you into next week?”

  “You’re exaggerating,” Alex whispered under his breath to avoid anyone hearing him. Meanwhile he was careful not to trip over a root that looked extra dangerous, given its oozing yellow ichor that covered most of its surface.

  “Please, I’m always exaggerating. But not this time.”

  Alex ignored the rock, instead he was already mentally mapping how this was going to go: Henry would find the beast. They would attempt a “team take-down.” Someone, probably Garret, would make a joke right before being punted by its tusks and being sent on a short vacation through the foliage surrounding them. Alex would do something dumb and heroic, and yet somehow effective. And then, maybe, just maybe, they’d eat bacon.

  Assuming the bacon didn’t eat them first, which, if he was being completely honest with himself, was a rather high probability given The System’s proclivity to somehow lead them into dangers that they simply were ill-equipped to handle.

  The clearing was unnaturally still, not at all peaceful-still, like some sort of magical glade containing a unicorn. No, this was a, the-woods-just-held-their-breath-and-are-waiting-for-something-to-die, kind of still. Even the birds had decided they had better things to do elsewhere and seemingly absconded to places unknown.

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  Sunlight had just begun filtering through the canopy in glimmering golden beams, which was rather awe inspiring, until Alex realized it was highlighting the absolutely massive creature currently rooting around a felled tree like it contained the precious answers to life and was refusing to give them up.

  The beast stood nearly nine feet tall at the shoulder, and its skin looked less like flesh and more like cracked granite someone had glued moss onto as a bad highschool theatre-arts-class stage decoration. Its tusks curved like miniature battering rams, and each step it made sent tremors through the ground like the forest itself was getting ready to move aside as this thing passed.

  “Stonehide Gnasher,” Obby said in Alex’s mind. Obby’s tone held the casual interest of a man flipping through an encyclopedia of nightmares capable of casual slaughter. “Not uncommon in old forests like this. They are rarely hunted, though. Hmm, I wonder why…”

  Alex didn’t respond to Obby’s jibe, he was busy watching the boar and wondering how something that big could move without shattering it’s own bones. Though, with a high enough vitality attribute, and enough stat refinements, he could assume that anything was possible in this world. Beside him, Henry slowly pulled his halberd from his back, the wood shaft whispering lightly against the skin of his palms.

  Then, Henry grinned like he was inhabited by the spirit of Garret. That’s a bad sign.

  “Let’s just try not to get gored,” Alex said, more to himself than anyone else, as he gestured for the others to spread out.

  The team slipped into formation with the ease of long practiced teamwork. Lance flanked right, Holly vanished left into the underbrush with a whisper of wind, and Garret quietly cursed under his breath while trying to wedge his shield into a useful position among the dirt, rocks and tree roots. Allie hung back, a potion vial in hand, and already preparing healing spells under her breath with an expression of someone very much done with the bullshit of an NPC on an escort quest.

  Alex gave a nod. Garret coughed. The boar looked up, then it charged.

  Garret, finally understanding the speed and strength of the thing as it got up to charging speed, yelped and dove sideways as the beast barreled past in mad dash, missing him by inches. His shield was hit and went flying into a tree, which exploded from the unyeilding strength of the metal slab, and fell over.

  Lance darted in, large curved blade flashing, slicing along the Gnasher’s flank. Sparks flew from the collision, but no blood. The creature appeared to have barely noticed the attempt to injure it. Henry followed with a two-handed overhead strike that would’ve cleaved a lesser beast in half, and the Stonehide-Gnasher acknowledged Henry’s effort by flinching slightly.

  Alex winced at the sight of the beasts defensive bulk. “Oh good, we’re fighting a boulder with ambulatory capabilities.”

  Almost immediately after, the fight descended into a glorious chaos.

  Spells cracked through the air from Peter, Zach and Cole, a combination of light, shadow and water splashing against its form. Holly’s gusts of slicing wind carved moss from its back as if she were giving a mere haircut to the thing. Alex rushed in, launching a few strikes, combined with [Flare] after [Flare], releasing bright bursts of explosive azure energy that were meant to stagger the beast, and hopefully damage it just a little. But it didn’t didn’t stagger, it ignored him entirely.

  The boar rammed through spellbolts, shrugged off weapon strikes, and at one point bit a lightning bolt sent its way by Eric, like it was a snack.

  By the three-minute mark in the fight, everyone was panting, some were slightly bruised, and all of them beginning to deeply regret their inclination towards bacon.

  Finally though, they managed an effective coordinated strike. Alex sprinted forward, yelling loudly and throwing a particularly overcharged [Flare] spell with a fist directly into the boar’s eye, making the beast halt its rampage a moment. Henry leapt from behind, grabbing the creature’s tusks and holding the beast in place with nothing but sheer brute strength and a misplaced amount of willpower. Holly danced in, her jian blade slicing with surgical precision just below the back leg joint, managing to place the attack between two sheets of stony skin and into the tender flesh beyond.

  The creature gave a groan, like a mountain-sized man-child complaining of a chest cold, then fell forward into the dirt.

  The others didn’t fail to capitalize on the beast’s moment of weakness. They fell on it in a torrent, Kate dashing in to thrust a fiery coated rapier into the thing’s remaining eye, Zach appeared on top of the beast in a whisper of shadows with his spear jammed into a spot near the base of its spine. Then came Lance and Peter slamming into its exposed underbelly in a rapid succession of attacks as if they were preemptively tenderizing the meat they would be extracting to cook later. Devon even appeared beside them, jamming a glowing item into its wounds that sent a pulse of sickly looking energy across its skin, causing various cracks to form.

  Eric made it atop the Gnasher’s head first, throwing a palm strike charged with crackling lightning directly between it’s ears. Just as he jumped away, Alex took his place, his form wrapped in an aether aura of light blue energy from his [Vita-surge Cloak]. His fist made contact directly where Eric had struck, and a resounding crack erupted over the area as he broke through the thick stony exterior, his fist sinking into hard flesh. He released his [Flare] then, a concussive force ejected downward, and split open the Gnasher’s skull with a spray of bone and brain-matter.

  Silence fell.

  Garret, still flat on his back from a second near-trample, raised a hand. “So… bacon?”

  Alex slumped off of the beast just as the energy from his spell died away. He groaned from the wave of tiredness that hit his being, wiping sweat from his brow, and frowned.

  Now that he was so close, and had time to pay attention, he could see that the boar’s hide was scarred in dozens of places; bite marks, claw tears, the occasional embedded, slender fang from a less lucky predator.

  “This thing’s been in fights before,” he said. “A lot of them.”

  Holly joined him, peering at the stone-cracked skin. “Guess it finally met something dumber than it was,” she said.

  “Us?” Alex asked.

  “Obviously.”

  They all looked at the body, an ancient bruiser of a beast who’d outlasted everything thrown at it, until now.

  Alex sighed. “Well. Let’s drag it back before Tom-Tom eats the moss off it.”

  From behind a tree, the Kobold muttered loud enough for everyone to hear him, “Too late.”