Flynn’s newest spell tingled within his mindscape, like an intrusive thought that cut through the fluff of everything else. To your back, it all but screamed. Back and right, it clarified.

  Vague shapes resolved within his mind’s eye, blurry and shifting like mist condensed into an animated form, but distinct enough to be recognizable. The little bastards were back.

  And they’d brought more friends again.

  Ten of them skittered towards him.

  Flynn turned with the calm of a man that knew he had the time to spare. His arrow nocked and his eyes keen, he stared into the distant gloom, ready. He wasn’t left waiting long.

  The first of the little scurrying things came to him dead-on, but the others were wilier. He sensed them scurrying to his sides, cloaked from his sight, but not from his senses. They were trying to surround him again, and this time, they had the numbers to do it effectively.

  Flynn had no desire to play along. He immediately took off in a dead run, an arrow loosed towards the one monster he saw. He expected it to dodge, and it did with ease. That was fine. He wouldn’t waste mana on a flash-bang or anything else. Not when they were so spread apart.

  He sprinted back down the fleshy path he’d come. There was a dip in the wall there that he’d made a mental note of in case it was necessary. It was now necessary.

  Flynn slid into the shadowed space and checked his senses. The ten were after him, but slowly. They were persistent and more agile, but they still weren't fast. Good.

  Flynn mustered an Illusionary Self into being.

  “Alright Cheek, just like we practiced right? Get in there.”

  The little bow nodded and disappeared into the illusion’s innards. Flynn smiled. He’d only practiced this once, and that’d just been an idle test to check if it was even possible as they walked. The results had been encouraging, but no test could compare to actual combat.

  He turned to the image. “You know what to do, right?” It should. It was him, and it knew everything he did when it came into being. The plan should’ve already been concrete in its mind. As expected, it nodded.

  “Good. Limit your shots, alright. I don’t know how smart these things are, but I don’t want to give them any reason to catch on to what we’re doing too soon. Oh, and don’t hold back on the spectacle. I want them fully focused onto you.” The two of them nodded. The image flashed him a wink as it turned away, and Cheek fluttered to his face and pecked him gently before it disappeared into the illusion, taking its place in the thick of its chest.

  Flynn grinned. Cheeky buggers, the both of them, but he couldn’t have asked for better helpers. He watched with expectation as the illusion sprinted away, its steps far lighter and far quieter than they had any right to be on such soft, squicky terrain. He hoped that the creatures weren’t keen enough to notice the irregularity. It was dark enough that it should be safe.

  His only other worry was whatever means the monsters used to track him. If it was scent-based, or something more esoteric, then his little trick was dead in the water, and he’d have to rely on his bog-standard ‘run-and-gun' as he’d done thus far.

  Fortunately, luck was on his side and the monsters seemed thoroughly convinced by the act. He saw in his mind’s eye as all ten veered towards the fleeting image of himself. The illusion stopped and drew back an imaginary bow before firing. An arrow sprang forth and scored a hit against the closest monster, and if for whatever reason the arrow that struck wasn’t as long as the arrow that’d been loosed... well, the monsters certainly didn’t seem to notice.

  Flynn grinned. He counted down ten seconds, watching as the monsters fully committed towards chasing the duo, before he snuck out and started to close the gap. Studying the assortment of targets, he waited until the time was right and then hurriedly approached.

  His steps were quick but measured, the din of the monster’s chase providing ample cover for the squick of his chase. Still, though they were thoroughly distracted, he wasn’t about to risk fucking up at an inopportune moment. With exacting care, he half tread half jogged until he was just a few meters behind the horde.

  In the meanwhile, Cheek had started to pepper them with Spectacle arrows. Flashes of light and sound erupted around the area, and though the drain on his mana was painful, it was necessary.

  The first few had gotten them all well and good, but afterwards, they’d started to wise up and look away every time Cheek fired a shot. That was good. It was great. They had no way to tell a normal arrow apart from a Spectacle, and that meant that they were flinching every time they were fired on.

  And that made for ample cover for him to strike.

  Drawing back his bow, he aimed high and sucked in a breath. Steeling himself, he sought his moment. The timing here was what mattered. He had to be exact. Waiting, and when it came, his fingers relaxed, and the arrow arced into the air.

  The monsters didn’t react, not even as it sailed above them. Perfect. Flynn smiled. The monsters flinched away from another of Cheek’s Spectacle Arrows before turning back, entirely oblivious to his own Spectacle Arrow landing amidst them. The explosion of light was piercingly bright, even to him, prepared as he’d been. For the creatures at ground-zero? Their screeches took to the air like a delicious choir of pain.

  Flynn did not wait until they recovered. A mana arrow was cutting through the air within a heartbeat, its tip aimed straight at the back of the head of the rear-most monster. The squelch of the impact was beautiful, and another arrow was away before the first had even fully settled.

  Another downed in seconds, and it was then that Cheek joined the slaughter. Arrows flew from its illusory cover, piercing into monstrous eyes and legs and necks without mercy.

  In the span of a half minute, half the monsters were dead, and though the other half had started to recover, by then it was too late. Flynn would not be stopped. Some of their number tried to turn around. Tried to face the threat at their backs. They were met with an arrow through the mouth for their efforts.

  Within moments, the whole group was dead, and Flynn loomed victoriously over their corpses. “Well, that was easy. I’d say that we did pretty fucking well, didn’t we?” he asked Cheek and his Illusory Self as they approached. Both nodded agreeably.

  You have earned a level

  3 >> 4

  Flynn smiled, unsurprised. How he loved grinding. And it’d been efficient too. He’d only spent less than a fourth of his mana capacity to slaughter ten monsters. At that rate, he could’ve probably handled a group four times as large, though maybe that might’ve been pushing his luck.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Small steps Flynn. Small steps.

  With a jolly tune on his lips and a hop in his step, Flynn set Cheek to overwatch before he studied the corpses for any loot. He wasn’t holding his breath. He wasn’t sure what the rate of loot drop was for anything else, but at a meagre five percent he likely wouldn’t be seeing a Lucky Gift any time soon.

  Fortunately, the gods of luck were kind, and he found three glowing drops waiting for his perusal. One was a Lucky Box, and he swooned that the damn gem actually worked wholly on him. Eyeing the object, he found that it was a small thing, just the size of a fist, wrapped with golden paper. Flynn wondered how a pillow could fit in it. Tearing it open, he was rewarded with...

  A limerick. Figures. Flynn unwrapped the tiny length of paper and read the barely legible words scrawled across its length.

  ‘Noah mused as he cruised in the whale,

  I'm in guts to my nuts in this jail,

  But I'll pass towards the ass

  As a mass of hot gas,

  And depart, like a fart, through the tail.’

  Wow. Very apt considering his situation. It didn’t earn a chuckle from him, but it did earn a smile. He tucked the paper into a pocket and would’ve kept the box too, just in case he needed it, but it faded away into nothing as soon as he’d plucked out the paper.

  Turning to his second prize, he found that it was another spellgem.

  Enfeeble

  Rank 1 Spellgem

  Targets struck by the socketed spell have a 25% chance of being afflicted with [Enfeeble] for 5s.

  Enfeeble reduces the target’s END and STR.

  And this one was much more to his taste.

  A status effect.

  Granted, it didn’t feel like the best effect he could imagine, but anything was better than nothing, and if nothing else it taught him that there were more status gems waiting for him out there. And he would find more. The tanky debuffer archetype was his second favourite style of character to play, and he would be over-the-moon if he could somehow meld that with his Illusionary Archer.

  The thought alone was enough to send a tingle aflutter in his gut. Flynn’s eyes glistened with the image of him decimating legions of foes with a single debilitating arrow.

  The youth shook himself from his daydream and moved to equip the gem onto his Spectacle Arrow when he reconsidered and socketed it into Cheek instead.

  Socketed spell, the description had said. Specific, unlike Lucky Gift, but still vague enough to raise questions. Did socketed spell mean that it only activated when using the spell itself, or if the spell’s effects, i.e Cheek, could activate it as well. Only time would tell.

  He blew a breath and turned to where the little Bowst twirled, ecstatic about the addition. Flynn patted it with a soft smile before he turned to the last drop from the pile of corpses.

  It wasn’t a gem or a box.

  Frankly, he didn’t know what it was. It had no tooltip to offer no matter how much he focused on it. It looked like a tooth from one of the creatures, but larger than his palm. It looked wholly unremarkable, aside from the glow that all loot items seemed to have. Just a weird monster tooth. Not exactly something he wanted to bother with taking along.

  He was of half a mind to leave it be and move on. He almost did, before the loot goblin in him piped up.

  It could be valuable, it whispered. It may have some use to someone at some time somewhere, and then he’d kick himself for having left it behind. And he would kick himself, he knew from past experiences.

  Flynn deliberated the item for several long seconds before he sighed and plucked it up. The glow died as he did, just like with the gems. He figured that it cost him nothing to take it along. It was small enough, and his backpack had other pockets, so he didn’t have to put it next to his food and water.

  That sorted, Flynn set out into the tunnel, Cheek retaking its place by his side. He knew another group of the things likely lurked out there somewhere. A bigger group, likely, if the pattern held. He paused. How much bigger? Fifteen? Twenty? What if it scaled up even more. No, what if other varieties popped out? He was being too casual expecting the monsters to remain the same, for all that they’d been growing smarter.

  It was likely that he could be faced with something new, and what then? His thoughts turned to his three unallocated stat points. The difference between life and death, he'd called them.

  Flynn Killwen

  Lvl. 4

  Initiate

  Traits:

  [Forerunner: Monster Slayer]

  Stats:

  STR:14 | SPD:15 | END:15 | PERC:19 | MPO:16 | MCP:13 | MAL:18 | MCT:14

  Unallocated Stat Points: 3

  Syscoins:

  28

  Class Spells:

  Illusionary Archer

  [Spectacle Arrow] [Create Illusionary Self] [Summon Bowst]

  Quests:

  1. An In-The-Body Experience

  What was the choice? What was necessary for how he planned to act? As an archer? Perception and speed would be his choice. But he needed mana to cast his spells, so his mana capacity couldn’t be ignored. Potency would be good too, if it worked as he presumed did. He wondered if mana alacrity would make his arrows fly faster or just increase the speed of his draw.

  He scrunched his brow, the dull ambient light casting faint shadows across his eyes. There was a lot to consider. Eventually, Flynn decided that he’d invest two points into his mana capacity, and one into speed. Mana was too critically important to him to be ignored.

  He felt no great change after he’d made his selection, though that might’ve just been because of how little he’d changed. Satisfied, he once again set off into the tunnel depths, his senses keen.

  Thirty minutes of walking at an even pace followed before he stopped again, perturbed. Something felt off. Flynn glanced about. He’d walked a fair distance. Granted, he had no idea if he was walking the right way or not. He could only hope so. For all he knew he was walking further away from the mouth, but that wasn’t something he could bother wasting a thought on. But that wasn’t the problem.

  He frowned. It was quiet, and it’d been quiet for too long. The monsters had attacked him every ten or so minutes since he’d awoken in the tunnels. But now? Nothing.

  His Monster Sense picked up on no movements, and neither did Cheek catch anything skittering around him. The area was deserted, and he didn’t like it. It stank to him of things other than the putrid stench in the air. Like a trap.

  He waited a minute, two, three before he summoned two Illusionary Selves to scout out the surrounding areas. They couldn’t go too far given the time limit: only five minutes out and five minutes back, and they both returned and mimed that they’d seen no dangers. No monsters.

  Flynn bit his lip. He didn’t like the quiet. It felt like a prelude to something worse. There was nothing he could do about it, though. He continued his march anew, though twice as tense as he’d been before. Every little crack in the wall was watched. Every little dip cautiously avoided. The dark seemed to grow thicker as he walked, and far more foreboding. His hand was white knuckled around his bow, and his fingers ready to draw on a thought.

  Cheek picked up on his mood for its normal exuberance was muted. Its sight was keen as it studied their environments, watching for the same danger Flynn was.

  A danger that never seemed to come.

  Flynn scowled. It was exhausting being so vigilant. He almost wanted the attack to come, if only to get it over with. It was just as the thought passed his mind that he felt it. Not a tingle against his senses, but the sensation of the flesh beneath his feet shifting. His eyes widened as a crease appeared in the floor, and then it gave way, parting like a valve to drag him inside, into the waiting dark below.

  The journey down was quick and wet and far too chaotic for him to process his thoughts. At times, he’d felt like he was being squeezed. At others, he was being pushed. His only consolation was knowing that Cheek was right behind him. He could feel the little bow on his trail.

  Seconds or minutes later, he was violently ejected out a fleshy spout, landing ass-first onto the floor. The sponginess of the floor absorbed most of the impact, but it hurt like a bitch, nonetheless. Flynn reeled, a pained scowl on his face, before he caught sight of his surroundings. And the monsters that filled it. The same many-limbed buggers as before.

  Dozens of them.

  His Monster Sense blared with alarm.

  He smiled. Finally.