He shelved the idea for a later debate as they lumbered forwards, a bloody spear and a cheap sword clutched in their vined hands. It struck Xander as sort of ironic that this fight was plant monster versus plant minion, even though it didn’t exactly look like it. As the larger of his creations jabbed with its spear, the wolf dodged rather nimbly, the small lupine creature much faster than the amalgamated pseudo-gnoll. Minion 2 was only a little quicker, but still managed to step forward and take a downward slash at their enemy.
The ‘fight’ that followed was more like a comedy of errors on both sides. The wolf kept trying to bite and slash at the two animated plant creatures, but its thorny teeth were ill suited to getting through the skeletal armor or doing much damage to the vines beneath. On the other hand, the two plants were slow and clumsy with their attacks. Xander had to get close on a couple of occasions to heal up his controlled plants from the little damage they were taking, but eventually a lucky slash ripped into the wolf as it dodged a well aimed thrust. The blade parted the thorny brambles like a machete through jungle flora, and the wolf’s back legs unraveled and stopped working right. The fight was basically over after that, a few more attacks and the no longer dodging monster was finally dispatched.
You have killed a Bramble Wolf (Level 7). For defeating an enemy 1 level higher than yourself you receive an experience multiplier.
Xander waited for another window to pop up informing him of an increased level, but it never came. After a minute or so of waiting, Augustus cleared his throat. “Ahem… you need to touch the remains to loot anything that it might have.”
“Wait, that's really something that happens? Man I knew this place had some game-like mechanics, but that’s pretty wild.” Xander said, mostly to himself. He did have his plants move aside so that he could do exactly that though. The moment that his fingers touched the dark brambles, a new system disk appeared.
Would you like to loot Bramble Wolf (Level 7)? 57 minutes remaining.
As he mentally agreed, the body almost instantly began to break down. What little structure there was to the creature began to liquify, turning into a sludge that would have done a hippie’s t-shirt proud. The every-colored goo gurgled and bubbled, shrinking as it released an absolutely noxious aroma that reminded Xander of the time he had mixed together every cleaning agent in the house as a kid and nearly melted his lungs from the resulting gas. He took a few hasty steps back with wide eyes as the process continued, covering his mouth and nose. The horrific yet somehow pretty sludge kept shrinking until it seemed to disappear into the ground entirely, leaving behind several small copper coins that looked like pennies at first glance.
“Uhhh… is it safe to pick those up?” he asked. Augustus actually chuckled “Yeah, it’s fine. The dungeon goo isn’t great to touch directly, but once it's gone anything left behind is okay.” Not having a reason to think the man would be lying to him, Xander stepped forward cautiously, before bending down to scoop up the three coins. Looking over them, they were irregular around the edges though mostly circular overall. There was an embossed G on one side, and the other had 3 engraved circles that followed the edge.
“What’s the deal with these coins? Why the G?” Xander asked. “Oh that’s easy, it means it was created in a tier 3 rank G dungeon” replied his watcher.
“Okay, but what does any of that actually mean?” Xander pressed.
“Each rank encompasses 50 levels, and each tier breaks those fifty levels down by 5s. So G is levels 1 through 50, F is 51 through 100, and so on. This particular dungeon is suggested for a solo level 15, so it's tier 3 of the lowest rank.”
He did some quick math in his head and then gulped “Wait… so S rank starts out at level 350?!” Augustus shook his head looking slightly perplexed. “I’ve never heard of an S rank? Rank A is technically the highest for people with 300 levels or more, though I’ve only heard legends about people reaching that high hundreds of years ago during The Sundering.” The man shivered at the name, making Xander wonder just how bad a cataclysm hundreds of years ago had to be to still have an effect.
The lack of an S-Rank was a little surprising, it was in most of the games he had played with any kind of ranking system. He had assumed it stood for ‘special’ or ‘super’ or something like that, but clearly this world had its own ways of doing things. Either way, there was plenty of room to grow, and he wasn’t getting any stronger by dawdling here. He didn’t really have any pockets to hold the coins so he started trying to sculpt a bit of his bone breastplate to hold them, only for a surge of fatigue to hit him after the spell finished.
Looking at his character disk, he immediately saw why. His mana was running low after using his healing spell so much during the fight, and needing to sustain two minions also made his mana regeneration very low. he mused. He thought about all the mana he had gotten from using ‘Reclamation’ on the bandits, but then realized that the wolf had been totally dissolved and absorbed back into the dungeon. “Dammnit” he complained, but the only person he could really blame was himself. Augustus just crossed his arms and waited, and Xander sighed before collecting his minions and trudging forward again.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
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Xander spent the next few minutes trying to come up with better names for his minions, but hadn’t been any more successful when the next fight sprang on them. There was no warning growl this time, just a blind corner that a blur of fangs and animated muscle came streaking out of. The bramble wolf slammed into the side of Stabitha, its teeth digging into the vines in the shoulder. With a wrench of its powerful jaws, the beast ripped the shambling skeleton’s left arm completely off and flung it away. Xander grunted at the feedback over his link to the damaged vine, but it thankfully didn’t die since the limbs were operated by offshoots instead of the main vine itself.
The distraction cost him a few moments, during which the bramble wolf kept trying to rip and tear into its prey, doing even more damage. Swordthony just stood there since it hadn’t received any instructions, but Xander managed to recover and take over total control. It was still awkward and uncomfortable trying to control two bodies at once, but again he focused on Swordthony’s armed and expendable minion body. Meanwhile, Stabitha tried to spear the wolf but the spear was not well designed to hurt this particular foe. It did, however, make for a decent distraction.
Closing in, Xander eschewed trying anything fancy, and just swung the former bandit’s sword in a number of overhead chops. His direct control was far superior to the slow and clumsy attempts, and he was kind of surprised how effective he was without having any kind of combat training at all. He could almost feel how he should attack, and just let those strange instincts guide him. Movies and games certainly didn’t count for experience, yet the bramble wolf went down to his attacks after only a half dozen or so chops.
You have killed a Bramble Wolf (Level 8). For defeating an enemy 2 levels higher than yourself you receive an experience multiplier.
“Guess I’ll take the win” he said to himself, relinquishing direct control and moving forward to loot this wolf as well. It too dissolved into rainbow sludge, but left behind five of the copper coins this time, which joined the first three. The next problem was what to do about the missing arm. He could of course regrow the missing vines, but was pretty sure that the amount of mana required would wipe out all of his remaining reserves, including the few points that he had regenerated between fights. He looked back at the warrior quietly following him, but didn’t even bother asking. He could feel the man staring at him, judging him. Probably still thought he was a necromancer or a witch or whatever.
Xander’s mood wasn’t helped by the lack of a level from killing this wolf. After the previous levels he would have thought he should get another by now, but maybe the dungeon monsters weren’t worth as much? That could have disturbing implications. Maybe Augustus only brought him here to get enough levels to be worth his time slaying. Was there a better reward for killing people? He definitely didn’t like the way the warrior watched him constantly, not that there was anything he could do about it really. For now, it might be better to save what little mana he had in case of an emergency.
Moving on, the bramble filled maze just seemed to go on and on. There were more side passages and more bendy paths, like the designer couldn’t decide whether they wanted a straight walled labyrinth or a circular one. The next wolf he encountered was just stalking through the paths normally and was dispatched without doing much further damage to either Stabitha or Swordthony. Even better, he finally managed to level up again, though he only got two stat points out of it. He dumped them both into improving his mana pool without the slightest hesitation, bringing it up to 9. Aside from increasing his total amount of MP, each point also increased his mana regeneration slightly which was very helpful.
Xander was about to continue on when Augustus suddenly asked, “Can we take a bit of a break? I haven’t had anything to eat since this morning, and I also need to find a private corner for some… business.” Xander wasn’t sure why the clearly powerful warrior still seemed so hesitant around him, but the guy was clearly still seeing him as a threat. “Sure,” he responded with a shrug. “I don’t have anything to eat though, so you’re on your own for that.” Augustus hunted around in his pack and came out with two small parcels wrapped in some kind of simple cloth, offering one to Xander.
He started to reach out for it reflexively, but then paused when he realized that he somehow still wasn’t hungry at all. Xander hadn’t eaten anything since coming to this world so far as he could remember, but that made even less sense if he considered that it had likely been several months. And he had been awake and fighting all day without any kind of food for that matter. Looking up to the sky above, he noted that it looked like the sun had descended past the point where he could see it already, and likely it would be dusk soon.
Xander stared at the offered meal for a moment longer before shaking his head “No… that’s alright dude, I don’t think I need to eat?”. The statement sounded more like a question, but Augustus didn’t seem to be surprised, or to care in general for that matter. After stuffing the extra meal back in his pack, he opened his, revealing what looked something like rice and dried meat, if rice was two inches long. As the man began eating, Xander had a LOT of questions he wanted to ask, but still didn’t know if he should trust this guy.
“So…” Xander said a bit awkwardly, but trying very hard to strike just the right tone of curious indifference, “Do you have any plans for tonight?”
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Augustus nearly choked on his dry rations when the dryad propositioned him. The entire day had been both exhausting and frustrating, with the clearly inexperienced girl making numerous mistakes. Her creepy skeletons were very durable for their level, which was the only reason she was able to deal with the bramble wolves. She also handled a sword like she had some very basic training with it, but not much more than that. He was terrible at training amateurs, and her bumblings grated on his professional nerves. Then there were her strange sayings and mannerisms that seemed entirely out of place on a creature of the forest.
And yet, for all that annoyance and the fact that she still had the trappings of a necromancer, he had found that he couldn’t keep his eyes off her curves. Even just walking normally caused her full figure to jiggle pleasantly, and he kept finding his eyes drawn to her assets even through the unflattering clothing she wore. This was totally unprofessional of him, and something he was usually able to avoid, even with female party members. He was tired and hungry after an entire day of walking in armor, even if he hadn’t actually been in a fight. Maybe that was part of his inability to keep his eyes to himself, and apparently she had noticed.
A part of him rejected the idea since she wasn’t human and he was still trying to see if she was a threat, but he had to admit that he really didn’t think she was a menace to the locals by this point. He hadn’t ever been the type of guy to have an easy roll with some sexy monstress, but there was something alluring about her despite her unsettling style. He shrugged mentally, thinking it was probably safe enough, and maybe having a good lay would relieve some of his stress. He moved closer to her, wrapping an arm around the dryad’s waist and pulling her closer.