“What the hell is that?” he asked in a hushed voice, returning to Erith.
She shrugged and pulled out the pamphlet, quickly scanning it before responding. “It looks like it's some sort of subsistence that the blood crawlers begin to produce if they are left alone for too long.”
Ray’s eyes widened. “We should move quickly.”
They walked deeper into the town, finding it eerily empty. It seemed like people had been there recently, with shops looking like they had been open that day, but strange red goo covered every wall, and there were no other signs that anyone was there.
A crash sounded from a nearby building as a door was crushed to splinters, and a blood-red creature charged into the street. It stood around waist height and had a body resembling a canine except for its head. It was a mess of eyes and mouths, and two large snake-like fangs were attached to the front, moving up and down as it hissed at Ray.
An incantation poured from his lips, and in less than a second since the creature appeared, it fell over, missing the central part of its chest. A chorus of shrieking howls blanketed the area as several more of those things burst from nearby buildings and quickly surrounded the pair. Erith's sword blazed to life, and she slashed forward, creating a line of fire between them and the creatures.
A few of them jumped through the line without fear, but the rest quickly stopped. Howls of pain came from the creatures as flames engulfed their bodies and slowly reduced them to ash. Ray mentally flipped through the new spells he learned from Glutteny Mastery, selecting one he thought would work well in this situation.
He began chanting his part of the incantation, and a swath of dark purple mana rose around him. It poured into him as the spell completed, forming a purple set of plain plate armor. He dashed forward, sword and dagger in hand, and charged into the horde, jumping over the fire wall. His weapons flashed as he cut down creature after creature, and a design began to form on his left shoulder pauldron with each kill.
With the 15th kill, it fully formed an image of the creatures, and a wave of mana exploded from Ray. Every blood crawler nearby began to howl in pain as chunks of their flesh disappeared into invisible maws. Ray winced at the wretched sounds mixing in the air.
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Monsters only then… He noted watching the carnage unfold.
A wave of heat hit his neck as the last creature fell, and he turned to see a tornado of fire moving in the other direction.
Whoa, that's a new one.
It faded a few moments later, and Erith walked towards him, sheathing her sword. “Is that all of them?”
“Looks like it, does the pamphlet have anything else?”
“No, and the quest only said to deal with the pack, so that should be done.”
“Yeah, I only wish we had gotten here earlier.”
Erith nodded, looking over the scene of carnage. “We should take one last look around to be sure.”
Ray nodded, and they split up looking for any monsters they may have missed. They regrouped an hour later, only finding a few extra creatures that they quickly dispatched.
“Alright, let's get going and report this to the guild,” Ray said, drawing his orb and opening a portal back to town.
“Back so soon?” Iris asked when she saw them enter.
‘Yeah, but I'm afraid it's with bad news, the creatures had already wiped the town out before we arrived,” Ray said.
Iris took a long breath, put her elbows on her desk, and rubbed her temples. “That's the third incident this week that would have been prevented if we had more proper monster hunters around here.”
“I thought that's what you were hiring, and Igi was training those other recruits for. Did that not work out?” Erith asked.
“It was but the only high-level cenedets we have gotten, where the equivalent of snake oil salesmen. Then for the newbies, Igi was training, which should have helped out if half of them hadn’t quit after the first close call with a monster when Igi wasn’t there to save them.” Iris slid further onto her desk, looking completely exhausted.
“Well, we plan to do a few more quests in the coming days, so hopefully we can help relieve some of that pressure.”
The scale instantly perked up at the words. “That would be great!”
“Glad we can help, but it's already quite late, so we will pick up our next one in the morning.”
“Perfect, I will look forward to seeing you!”
They left the building and took a portal back to camp. The following day, they returned and accepted another quest, completing it quickly and getting another. This continued for another week, but the progress was painfully slow compared to what they had grown accustomed to in the forest. Even after a week of non-stop leveling, Ray had only reached level 74, and Erith had barely passed the 7th threshold.
“We need to find the horde if we are going to have any chance at this,” Ray said as they got ready for bed on the 8th night.”
Erith let out a long sigh. “I know, but we can’t just gamble on finding them.”
“I know, but,” an idea popped into Ray’s mind. “But what if we hire some of the members of the monster hunter guild to help us track them?”
“We could try, but I'm not sure they will be able to help us out, especially with the mountain of work they still have.”
Ray sighed. “You're probably right, but still it's worth a shot.”
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Bonus chapter on Saturday covering Chio and Nevalla's journey, and Sunday finishing Kai's story.
