Jeffrey’s question shocked him. Weak? Useless? Did he ever leave the starting area? Of course, he did.
He allowed memory to take over.
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Tom was crouched high up in the branches, looking down at the creature below him. It had a rank of around ninety. It was, of course, hard to tell. For special monsters, their levels, experience, well, everything about them went wonky.
It was a strange beast whose torso was the size of a minibus and had a long tail that doubled that length. It had six short, stumpy legs under it, and then directly above each leg, about two-thirds of the way to the top were a further six arms.
The creature moved slowly through the berry bushes, its arms moving independently to pluck the fruits and fill woven buckets that, when full, it would pass up the arms to the mouth and it would pour the berries in. Before swallowing, it would chew about three times with red liquid spilling from its lips.
It was the same each time.
The creature was an omnivore because when he had found it, the animal was busy eating the spoils of a successful hunt. A deer that had been brought down by an arrow before being skinned. Whatever the monster was, it had what Tom mentally labelled as ‘Tool Smarts’. While it was still an animal, it possessed the instinctive ability to use weapons. Looped around its neck was a pouch that contained its bow and an assortment of swords and short spears.
That, by itself, was problematic. The uncertain rank… was equally as concerning.
Everything told Tom that he should run.
Tom waited and watched from the tops of the trees. While he was up here out of its line of sight, he was mostly safe and advancement in this trial was heavily correlated with risk. He would not abandon a challenge while there was a chance of success.
On closer inspection, he noticed more details. The feet had long sharp claws on them, and if he were to somehow find himself underfoot, then that would be the end. The arms moved independently. It was not ambidextrous it was much better than that. Six arms, not two, and each of them, based on how they picked berries, could fence with a separate opponent. The tail had a spiny protrusion on the back like a mace’s head, which was wider than he was. While he had not yet observed it using the tail, it looked deadly, and monsters here rarely pretended strength.
It was strong, a creature he had never encountered before, let alone killed.
Tom wet his lips as he felt the familiar determination fill him. It was like a walking bank of contribution points.
He shut his eyes, and he was in the system room.
The shop flashed lights to try to get his attention, but he ignored that. At some point, he would change the settings to make it less flashy, but for now he liked the pretentious in- your-face capitalism that the current setup evoked. It was funny, and there was so little humour in his life.
The creature he had seen was worth a question, and he walked up to the blank wall and the counter above it.
Fifteen.
That would be enough. Dux was limited to yes or no responses, but Tom knew the mind behind those answers. It was smart, omniscient even. She understood the intent behind his questions. Especially key terms he had defined previously.
“Can I defeat it?”
“Yes.”
He flinched in surprise at the answer.
The counter in the corner dropped to fourteen after asking his question.
That was not the response he had been expecting. He had expected a giggling no as an answer. That would have told him not today and probably not for years.
Yet the answer was yes and defeat was something by necessity that he had defined carefully. In this question, it meant, If I approach the fight with my current skills and weapons with the right strategy, will I only lose one time out of a hundred? And is the chance of me dying, being captured, or permanently impaired no more than one in ten thousand?
Basically, he was happy to fail, provided he could escape and reset.
It had answered yes, but that monster was clearly too strong for him. Not only was it higher ranked, but it also had those multiple arms and all those weapons around its neck. He was an old hand at fighting higher-ranked beasts, but this was not just a beast, it was a tool user as well.
“Hmmm.”
That meant there was a strategy he could use.
“Is it vulnerable to my spark?”
“No.”
Tom immediately kicked himself for his poorly worded question. He should have said to my magic.
“Is it vulnerable to my magic?”
“No.”
The answer was physical then. Tom opened his eyes and studied it from his perch high above. It had moved forward a couple of steps and, judging by its progress so far, it had another five minutes in this berry patch before it moved on. Try as he might, Tom could not see any revealing weaknesses.
He shut his eyes and returned to the shop room.
“To defeat it, do I need to prepare something?”
“No.”
Shit. His mind had expected the answer to be yes. Some weird poison or construction of a trap.
“No magic or environmental answer,” he pondered out loud. “And its rank is a ninety with apparent weapon skills.” He stopped thinking he had already used four days’ worth of questions and they were the most important resource he had access to. Now that he had personal strength, they were far more valuable than even safe areas.
“To defeat it, do I need to exploit a physical vulnerability?”
“Yes.”
“To defeat it, is there a specific spot I need to target?”
“Question’s too broad.”
“Shit,” he whispered to himself. Dux usually answered that question. He thought back to previous times he had played this twenty-question game. Nope, his phrasing was wrong.
“To defeat it, is there a specific spot I need to strike?”
“No.”
What? He felt like screaming it out. Something was there, just out of his reach. His mind was going crazy trying to tease it out. Tom opened his eyes and studied it again. No weakness to magic, no specific spot to strike, and no need to prepare anything in advance, which just implied he jumped on it and fought.
Not down low, he thought to himself. Those claws were lethal.
Front on? Tom carefully examined it. If he attacked it from the front, two arms could easily defend the face. It also had a nasty beak appendage, and he would almost certainly die if it bit him. Finally, there was no specific spot he needed to strike, so it wasn’t as if attacking the face and grabbing the eyes was the solution.
From the back? That tail looked dangerous, but the arms would be out of action, which made it doable.
Blind spot? Nope, it had four eyes, two front and centre that were designed for doing fine work that required depth perception, and then two on the side of its head. They bulged out, sort of like cow eyes; the bloody thing had a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of vision.
How about the top? Maybe. That back was broad, and those arms might struggle to reach it. The tail swung low. Ponderous and with that heavy mace on its end, Tom doubted it had the flexibility to curl up and protect the back.
He returned to the system room.
“To defeat it, do I need to get onto its back?”
“Yes.”
Inside, he did a little fist pump. Twenty questions for the win. So far, he had only used eight. It was not a done deal yet.
“To defeat it, do I need to get on its back near its head?”
“No.”
“How about the middle back?”
“No.”
“Between the tail and the middle back.”
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“Yes.”
He had four questions left. Should he try to confirm immediately or search for more detail?
“Do I need to drop from a tree onto it?”
“Yes.”
There was nothing else he could think of. It was time for the money question and if the answer was no. He would need to retreat with twelve questions wasted unless he ran into this again in the future. “With my current build and plan, will I defeat it?”
“Yes.”
With a satisfied smile, he opened his eyes and crawled along the branches to position himself above the beast preparing to drop down upon it. With a brief pause he used his advanced spatial inventory to replace his bare feet with claw boots, adjust the armour to bring out the sharp blades at the elbow, and finally summoned his wyvern claw daggers.
He was ready.
Mentally, he rehearsed his plan. He would drop down landing on top of it on the lower middle back. Using his clawed feet and daggers he would secure his position, and then presumably dig down through the thick leather skin till he killed it.
Simple.
Silently, he dropped, leading with his daggers.
They slammed into either side of the backbone, then the rest of him crashed onto the creature’s back. His breath was blown out of him, and it took him an instant to reorientate. The thing was tougher than he had hoped as his daggers had only penetrated halfway to the hilt. He was not even sure whether they had gotten fully through the skin, but the handhold they provided was solid. His feet scrambled momentarily before those ultra-sharp claws in his boots dug in, freeing up his arms to start the fight.
There was a loud, panicked noise coming from the monster now. When it stopped, Tom saw it grab at the weapons in the sheath on its neck and he remembered why he was here.
It was kill or be killed.
He yanked the right dagger out and started stabbing vigorously to pierce the thick skin. He was used to this method of killing larger animals, and the arm movements, while frenetic, were automatic. Instead of focusing on that, Tom monitored his surroundings. Swords, spears, the head craned at him so one eye could see him in totality.
Tom considered using spark to blind it and then abandoned the idea. The eye was a metre too far away, and it would be a waste of energy. If that was important to the fight, Dux would have answered differently.
His dagger kept thrusting.
The massive body beneath him twisted and bucked. His movements were ferocious, but his feet and footholds were too powerful. The beast failed to unbalance him, let alone knock him off.
The entire back went up then down, leaving him attached only by blades, then it launched itself up and his nose smacked into the hard skin and thin scratchy hair. Tom’s eyes watered as he stabbed again at the beast’s backside. The position he was in was not at all precarious; it had done its best to remove Tom, so a bloody nose wouldn’t faze him at all. Importantly, even the middle and back arms couldn’t get the angle to threaten him. The front ones could, but the spear was not long enough for it to reach him. Dux had not lied. The monster couldn’t reach him here.
The dagger finally slid in smoothly, and when he pulled it away, it was covered with a dark blue liquid. He was through the skin, and with his next thrust, it went in all the way to the hilt.
He yanked it out again.
The proof of concept was complete, and he was through the first section. The dagger disappeared into his soul storage, and the small machete used mainly for butchering animals came out.
He started hacking, trying to widen the gap the dagger had created even while his eyes roamed around constantly searching for threats.
The monster smacked into a tree, which broke.
The machete had opened a large gaping wound through the skin. Progress, but hardly significant to the creature it was fighting. In human terms, that was only a small graze.
Tom was lurched forward.
What?
The beast was now pacing backwards.
Why?
Tom peered behind him to see if he could ascertain the monster’s plans.
The tree it had crashed into earlier had fallen and the animal was planning to go back under it.
“No!” he snarled. Tom did not know why he had thought all he had to do to kill a creature that was statistically way stronger than him was to challenge it by getting to a secret position and hack away till it died.
Things were never that easy.
The tree had been broken about a metre and a half up and then fallen to the side. The break was not clean. It was still attached to its trunk, and the branches in the tree’s crown cushioned the other end. It was behind them, sort of positioned like a limbo pole. Worse for Tom, it was at his height.
That was not an accident. It had broken the tree at that height deliberately. The monster was going to back itself under the tree and then try to scrape him off.
Tom wondered about whether he should jump off or hunker down. While the monster’s trick was clever, it had not been executed perfectly. The trunk was a little too high. If he was to flatten himself, he should be able to go under it.
Smart monsters, he hated them.
While this attempt for it might end up as a disappointment, it would adapt and learn. Time was not in his favour, and he needed to kill faster. If this tree failed, then the monster would set up a second tree and do it, or better or even worse, roll and squish him.
With a thought, the machete returned to his expensive soul storage and was replaced by his precious sword claw. It was indisputably the greatest weapon he possessed. Created from the claw of a giant pterodactyl with a wingspan of almost five metres, it had only a slight curve to it, and the magically sharp cutting edge was as long as his arm.
Unless Tom could defeat it, the monster had a winning strategy.
He pushed with his muscles, instantly springing up to stand on the back of the monster. It was dangerous, and Tom knew he did not have much time before he had to crouch down to avoid the weapon attacks.
Tom put that threat out of his mind and focused.
He plunged the weapon deep into the gap of the skin that his heavy knife had opened. The undefended flesh offered almost no resistance, allowing the sword to plunge through to the hilt. While pulling it out, Tom twisted and rotated the blade to further open the wound.
The monster continued to reverse.
He was running out of time. He thrust the weapon back into a different spot, knowing that the chance of hitting anything vital was almost zero, but that was not why he was doing it.
He glanced behind him again quickly.
Time had run out.
He dropped flat onto his stomach.
The creature continued to move backward. The tree trunk was above his feet, but there was clearance; and despite the slight upward slope of the creature’s back, it would be tight, but it would miss him.
The animal rocked, shifted, and he felt its entire body raise.
No!
Smart animals, he fucking hated them!
Tom tried to react, but his legs were already pressing into the trunk, pinning him. The monster took another step backward, and the weight of the trunk squished him into the beast’s rock-hard skin. Prior to the trial, that single step would have pulverised his pelvis and created so much internal bleeding that there was no chance of survival, but Tom was superhuman now. Super yes, but not invincible — and that much force crushing into him hurt. He grimaced. Because his arms were still free, he moved his sword claw more frantically. He needed to find a way to kill it quickly. Once he got out from under the tree, he would switch to a spear and see if that could put holes in something vital.
It took another step, and he screamed in pain as the wood rolled up and over his poor body into a new position. It was crushing his middle back and there was a stub of a branch poking into his left side.
No!
The monster stepped back once more.
He screamed as the trunk rolled over while he clung desperately to not be dislodged. He pushed his head down and he felt his skull being squeezed for a moment, and then suddenly it was past him. Red blood splattered on the dusty leathery skin under him. That branch stub had taken a chunk of flesh with it.
Touch Heal closed the wounds before blood loss was a consideration. At this point it was automatic, and while he had mana, his healing would make a troll envious.
The monster was still moving backward, with the broken tree being carried up the back. Then it stopped arcing its back and returned to its usual posture. The tree dropped half a metre.
It charged forward.
“No!”
He pushed himself into a squat, ripping his claw feet out of the skin with a practiced shuffle, he jumped up and over the trunk as it rushed underneath him. He landed heavily, scrambling for a moment till his feet dug in properly once more.
Blue-black blood was now running down the creature’s side from the wound. He wished he had a proper combat axe, but he'd never received one as a reward. He wasn't going to waste experience on buying items, and as for crafting, well, he'd rather fight with his fists than rely on a weapon he'd crafted himself. He was pretty sure such a hypothetical monstrosity would break on the first swing.
He got out his second claw sword and used the two in tandem. He focused on cutting open the animal. He swung like a berserker. His blades indiscriminately chopped at the skin and flesh to expand the wound. Chunks of meat went flying.
The creature had turned around and was charging to go under the trunk once more. With a thought, he stored both blades and squeezed himself into the cavity he had carved into the beast, making himself a Tom-sized hole.
The monster got its head under the tree, and then the trunk rolled down its back. Tom was mostly under the line of the scales, but not fully. It was like being hit by an ogre’s club. Ribs and bones in his back shattered because it had launched itself upwards right when the trunk was above him.
Touch Heal a moment later patched him back together. He pushed himself out of the hole. It was hard to see through the dark blood that covered him.
But his desperate manoeuvre had almost worked, and it represented a clear path to victory.
He sat up and resisted the urge to give into blood lust and just stab and stab the creature that had hurt him. Instead, he carved out what had to be a fifty-kilogram steak with his sword. Then he threw it away.
Blue blood was everywhere.
Disgusting.
However, there was more space now. He rotated, and he pushed his legs into the hole he had created. His swords disappeared, and he made precise but hurried cuts with his daggers. Slash, slash, then toss out a chunk of meat.
Rinse and repeat.
He watched as the monster ran at the tree again. He plunged his face forward, pushing his head into the soft, slimy blood. Lowering himself down so that his body was completely inside the monster.
The tree smacked against his hip, rattling him, but Touch Heal fixed the dislocation almost instantly. Far calmer now, Tom sat up and spat out the blood that had got in his mouth and kept cutting. More steaks went flying.
The beast alternated between roaring and squealing. It tried the tree once more. Then, while running, it tipped over and did a crushing roll. Tom was briefly squeezed between the flesh and the ground, but he was unharmed this time.
He was going to do it.
Optimistically he attacked the backbone, but his daggers bounced off, barely scratching it. Not for the first time, he regretted being too cheap to get that axe. With a sigh, he cut toward the centre of the monster. His dagger went through a thick membrane and a liquid spewed out. It stung and sizzled when it hit him.
Stomach acid.
Tom repositioned and then made a series of cuts lower down on what must have been the stomach wall. Acid poured out, but the important thing was that it was not directed at him. Instead, it pooled inside the creature.
The roars went up an octave.
His ears hurt, and now he wanted it to shut up. He kept hacking and went through a rubbery pipe as thick as his arm. Blue blood shot out of it like it came out of a hose. The cavity he had created rapidly filled. Tom was literally sitting in blood up to his chest. The monster did one of its desperate rolls, and a bathtubs’ worth of blood emptied. He only held his position because he manifested both his swords back and had driven them into the creature’s flesh to act as pitons.
The pipe he had cut through, which must have been a major artery, kept hosing out blood.
Then it slowed, sending out sluggish bursts. The monster stopped moving and liquid stopped spraying out of the artery. Absolutely exhausted by the physical effort he had to exert to dig into the creature, he pulled himself out.
He looked down and saw that he was blue. Every part of him was covered in blood.
“Not good, Tom,” he muttered. The area he was in was hostile, and blood attracted predators.
“Need to find a stream,” he told himself while looking around.
On top of the monster, a small glowing mote appeared which would contain a system reward that would be generated based on the parameters set by the council of GODs. This tutorial was the same as the world they would eventually be sent to for the contest. Everything was the same. The monster variety, the reward system, the trials, the system room, and even how experience points could be spent. The only difference was the daily question.
Tom frowned at that last thought. Maybe he needed to switch strategies, so he did not have to rely on that.
“Contribution Points Awarded, one hundred and forty-two,” said a voice that Tom knew only he could hear.
That was a lot.
“Experience awarded.”
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Tom pulled himself out of the memory and looked at Jeffrey. Had that idiot really just accused him of never leaving the starting area?