Chapter 30 – The Blighted (Patreon)

Glenn stepped away from the edge of the cylindrical hole and shivered. He could hardly see, even though his night vision was better than most. As an Archer, he seemed to have exceptional eyesight beyond what the starter skills would suggest.

He had barely been able to see Jimmy, let alone reach out and grab him as he clung to that beam with soul-frightening desperation.

“What am I going to do,” he muttered to himself. His bow had miraculously survived, but his daggers had fallen somewhere along the way.

Glenn instilled his quiver with mana, repopulating it with arrows as he mulled over his options. He had no lantern and no means of making light. The odd side tunnel he had managed to climb and crawl into only went deeper.

There was no way in hell he was going to risk going back out into that hole. He had heard that even if you fell into water, once you got up to a certain height, it was like hitting concrete.

No, thank you, he thought, pacing back and forth in the narrow tunnel.

There was a faint buzzing in the back of his head that ended up being that weird store opening, but he had so few points that he didn’t think he wanted to waste any on whatever it might have.

He had packed plenty of the strange bread and jerky they had found in the storerooms below the tower. Henry had been kind enough to give them plenty of water in those leather flasks he had, so there wasn’t much Glenn needed at the moment besides a good shower.

Checking his gear again, Glenn’s hands moved quickly and assuredly. His father had been an avid hunter, always espousing the use of bows or crossbows at the worst to keep the playing field “fair”.

Glenn didn’t see how using a compound recurve bow to snipe an elk across a clearing was very fair, but he supposed it was a lot fairer than using a gun up in a hunter’s blind.

It also wasn’t as loud.

Once he was sure his string was still in good shape, and that his flasks hadn’t leaked or let any of that foul water intrude, Glenn was out of reasons to stall.

This was the first time he’d been on his own. Henry had scooped up his group the moment they met, and it had been relatively smooth sailing ever since last night.

That murderer had killed two of their own, though he suspected Kent had somehow got wrapped up in it too. That Rogue needed to be stopped before he came back with more people.

Henry had impressed upon them that the safety of their settlement was in danger. If this guy got out and told some of the nasty people they had hidden from, their whole group could be killed or worse.

Glenn wasn’t going to let that happen. He didn’t want to hurt this guy, but he had seen firsthand what he was capable of. That Rogue was incredibly dangerous. His supernatural power over darkness and those daggers that flew even faster than Glenn’s arrows were frightening to behold.

The villain had to be stopped. At all costs.

The deaths of Austin and Rochelle played again in his mind’s eye. He had been so numb, so terrifyingly frightened that he would have stood there and been killed if not for Jimmy pulling him down.

In the end, even Jimmy, the strongest of their group, hadn’t been able to survive.

Glenn checked his tracking skill and could feel a tug down into the tunnel and somewhere to his right. So, the Rogue was still alive. And now it was just Glenn and him.

He would have to be careful, far more cautious this time. His skill was at range, but the Rogue was a dab hand with those wicked little throwing knives.

Glenn had an ace up his sleeve that the Rogue didn’t have. He had a magical bow and quiver that apparently resisted the foul waters, and what was more, he could track the Rogue.

All he had to do was stay far away and wait for his moment.

Glenn stared down the dark yawning portal to the depths of the sewer. “And I need to make sure that whatever monsters I see, I give a wide berth. Easy. Just hunt a well-known murderer who killed a third of my entire crew in the blink of an eye, and then unleashed a torrent of sewer water that killed the rest. Easy. This isn’t a bad idea at all.”

Shouldering his bow, Glenn took one cautious step after the other into the gloomy darkness. He had nowhere else to go. The only way was forward.

With any luck, he’d still be able to come back to Henry with his head held high, knowing he protected them with everything he had.

And if not… well, he didn’t know how to get back, anyway. Maybe there was another non-psychotic group out there that would take him in.

***

Luke ducked and rolled beneath the rusted axe blade aimed for his head. He came up, both blades flashing, carving the putrescent creature from stem to stern.

It collapsed as if its strings had been cut. Luke didn’t stay long. He had learned his lesson the first time the [Blighted Barbarian] he defeated had exploded into a plume of caustic poison.

Granted, it had healed him. Except the smell, let alone the chance that he wouldn’t resist it this time, was too much for him to risk.

Right on cue, the creature detonated, spraying the narrow corridor walls with green goo.

You have defeated [Blighted Barbarian - Level 19]. Extra experience gained for slaying an enemy above your level. 16 LP obtained.

Despite the higher leveled monsters he was facing down, Luke still hadn’t leveled up. He had noticed for a while now that it was getting harder to level up, and this was probably the largest jump he’d seen so far.

Perhaps the cusp of every 5th level ramped up the required amount of experience. It would make sense given that every 5th level gave a selection of skills to choose from, often dramatically increasing his power or range of abilities.

Luke strode forward, feeling absolutely filthy from his head to the soles of his boots.

At least he wasn’t freezing. He hated the cold. It was unpleasantly warm and moist in the sewers, but at least he wasn’t at risk of hypothermia.

Which would be a real problem because everything down here seemed to want to spit, spray, or dunk him into something wet and nasty.

Flicking his blades to clear the muck from them, Luke darted into an alcove just as a thundering set of feet echoed down the tunnel.

He held the blades close and wrapped the shadows in the alcove around himself like a second skin. Then he held his breath as the putrid creature lumbered right past him.

The only benefit of smelling as foul and rank as he did was that it apparently masked his scent to these humanoid creatures. They were big and bulbous, with a monstrous strength beyond what he would have expected.

They wielded massive weapons, either clubs of driftwood or rusted weapons that were far too big for anybody but a giant to wield.

So much for only humans being able to wield weapons, Luke thought.

Luke counted under his breath, and then, just like the last two times, another creature stalked past. This one was smaller and craftier, with a threadbare crimson hood. The emaciated figure walked with a hunched, loping gait after the rotting brute.

Despite himself, Luke shivered. He hated zombies. They had always terrified him as a kid when he had stupidly stayed up late to watch one of Romero’s zombie flicks.

They had been a thing of terror ever since.

Luke wasn’t sure that the blighted barbarians were undead, but they sure as hell weren’t alive like most creatures.

They seemed to be rotting. Their skin was more like sludge that slowly flowed and dripped off them into a foul-smelling muck.

Plus, they were supernaturally strong and if you gave them half a chance, they would cave your skull in.

As bad as the barbarians were, their little crimson hooded followers were worse. They were fast and nimble, and used wicked curved sickles for weapons.

He really did not want to have to face both of them at the same time.

That was why Luke stepped out of the alcove after the crimson hooded figure hobbled past. He stepped forward, his falchion leading, and stabbed into the creature’s back.

Luke moved as one with the shadows. As fast as the crimson hood was, it had no idea what happened until after Luke’s blade poked out of its chest.

Small and wiry, they were more dangerous than anything Luke had faced before. He was already moving the ruins longsword into position, preparing to parry the sickle and disarm it at the same time, when the creature managed to slip off the blade and turn around.

That shouldn’t have been possible.

Any creature of that size would have been dead or in too much agony to do anything about it, much less the biomechanical issues of having a lung or more internal organs pierced.

It had been a fright the first time these creatures had continued fighting after what should have been a mortally debilitating attack.

Sparks flared and brightened up the tunnel. The noise brought the attention of the blighted barbarian. Luke wasn’t worried. The barbarian was nearly the size of the tunnel itself. The monster would take time to turn around and come back.

Luke was getting good at using his shadow manipulation in new and different ways. Wrapping shadows around his retreating falchion, Luke twisted on the balls of his feet as his longsword locked the creature’s sickle out to the side.

With his falchion shrouded in shadow, Luke thrust out and took the creature right in the neck. A simple flick of his wrist made sure that the crimson hood, no matter how resilient, wouldn’t trouble him any longer.

And then it was time to deal with the barbarian.

Here he didn’t need any fancy footwork or cloaking shadow powers. All he had to do was move as fast as possible. Grateful for the shadows all around that lent him extra speed, and his recently heightened stats, Luke danced around the barbarian with ease.

The tunnel was unsettlingly narrow, but Luke’s nearly 100 Dexterity made it seem as wide as a boulevard. He used the walls and even the ceiling to maneuver around the barbarian’s massive club.

It struggled to hit him, largely because it couldn’t understand why its 7-foot-tall club couldn’t swing easily in the cramped tunnel.

Though it took considerably longer than the crimson hood, the barbarian eventually fell as well, giving him the customary experience notification he was familiar with.

He was right on the cusp of the next difficulty spike, a few more rooms and he would be getting 32 LP per kill instead of the now standard 16.

As he cleaned off his blades and sheathed them, Luke found himself looking forward to the doubled LP. Now that he had something to spend it on, he was on the hunt for as much LP as he could get his hands on.

That wasn’t the only reason, though. Every 10 levels, the monsters seemed to get unnaturally stronger. They gained new abilities, new variants, and were a considerably greater challenge to deal with.

He found himself wondering what the level 20 variant of the blighted creatures would be. They were significantly hardier than any monster he’d faced so far. Despite that, his high Dexterity and dual wielding skill made them fairly easy to deal with so long as he didn’t have to take on more than two at a time.

If Luke did, he’d be in trouble. Especially if they gained new abilities. He would have to watch out for it, but he couldn’t deny the thrill of excitement at the new challenge just around the corner.

That was, until he came to the end of the tunnel and found himself in a large open expanse that smelled of green rotting things and damp, moldy earth.

Cloaking himself in shadow, Luke stepped out onto the rickety scaffolding extending from the wall and spied his first monster less than ten feet away, dragging a long whip adorned with serrated, rusty blades.

[Blighted Ghoul - Level 25]

Oh good, he thought sourly as it turned its hateful gaze on him and let loose a hideous scream.