“Are you still complaining about some nursery rhyme?” Sunie asked, firing an ice spear at the large bat.
We’d come into the Plains Biome at night, needing to start hunting some of the nocturnal predators. There were far more of those out at night then the ones during the day. A lot more really. We hadn’t gone a hundred feet from the entrance before the first pack of Dark Sky Bats had attacked. There were about a dozen of the flyers.
I hated flyers. Before I’d developed the Force Lance, ranged opponents were my bane. I just couldn’t reach them. Now I could stand on the ground and fire Lances, aiming for the wings. The hope would be to damage the wings and make them crash where I could pummel them to death.
“Sorry,” I yelled back to Sunie as my kinetic energy empowered fist smashed a Sky Bat’s head to mush. “Just aggravated.”
“Over a nursery rhyme?”
“Kind of,” I said, standing up and scanning the sky. There were still four more flying above us. They were pretty fast, easily avoiding Sunie’s ice spears. They couldn’t see my Force Lances, or detect them with sonar or whatever bats used. So I could take them down. It was slower though. “It’s more I’m aggravated about what was lost. Every week or so something pops up and I remember what we lost twenty-five years ago.”
Sunie’s ice spear struck a bat, sending it spiraling to the ground. It’d been a lucky shot, the bat had just been grazed. I rushed over as the creature started to stand up. I didn’t let it, firing a Force Lance at its head. I caught it in the shoulder, but it got knocked back down, giving me plenty of time to get to it.
“I forget that for you the Integration wasn’t that long ago,” Sunie said, watching the sky.
It was hard to see the bats against the black sky. No stars, barely any moon, so barely any light. The night in the Endless Plains Biome was dark. And the bats were almost completely black. It was hard to track them. “I never knew my world before the Integration. It had been centuries and the world under the Celestial Challenge System is all we knew.”
“I don’t want Earth to wind up like that,” I said. “I want to preserve as much of our history as I can.”
“That is a noble goal, my friend,” Sunie said and immediately cursed as his ice spear missed one of the last bats.
I nailed it with a Force Lance. I’d watched the path of Sunie’s spear, taking a guess which way the bat would turn. I’d been right. As it crashed on the ground, I let Sunie take his frustrations out on it.
It took us another fifteen minutes or so to finish off the last of the bats.
YOU HAVE SLAIN DARK SKY BAT. YOU HAVE GAINED 20 TUTORIAL POINTS AND 20 MULTIVERSE CREDITS. YOU HAVE GAINED +1 BAT EAR, +1 SONAR GLAND AND +1 SONIC ESSENCE
We’d gotten ears and glands from each of the twelve but only the one Essence. I held it, studying the thing. It was a light yellow color, pulsing with energy.
“Did you decide if you were going to go with the Sonic Essence?” Sunie asked.
“Not yet. I was so busy that I forgot to even look into the availability of the Essence.”
“Don’t you have people that can do that for you?” Sunie asked as I put the Essence in my Inventory.
We started walking, following Sunie’s compass to the next Dungeon.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “I just hate pushing personal stuff like that onto them.”
Sunie stopped, looking at me.
“You are the Faction Leader. Isn’t that what they are there for?”
I shook my head.
“To be my personal errand runners? No. Their job is to run the Faction, help the people out and all that stuff, not do something I’m capable of doing. If I had the time.”
Sunie shook his head.
“You are a strange man,” he said.
I chuckled.
We hadn’t been hanging out that long and he already knew me so well.
***
About twelve hours later we left the next Dungeon. It was one that had been rated for a full party. We’d barely finished it by the end of the timer. There was two of us and it was made for five. And there were a lot of flying enemies, which is what really slowed us down. I thought we did pretty good and the Infinite Tower agreed.
YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE DARKENED SKIES DUNGEON.
YOU HAVE GAINED +5,000 TUTORIAL POINTS AND +5,000 MULTIVERSAL POINTS
YOU COMPLETED THE DARKENED SKIES DUNGEON WITH 00:15:43 LEFT. YOU HAVE PLACED AS THE 35TH BEST TIME AT RUNNING THE GROWLING OAK GROVE DUNGEON.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
YOU HAVE GAINED +6,500 TUTORIAL POINTS AND +6,500 MULTIVERSAL POINTS
That was an excellent ranking. Sunie and I high fived at that.
“I knew teaming up with you was going to be good,” he said as we exited.
We’d gotten a Level Up Crystal and I let Sunie keep that. He’d let me keep the dozen Sonic Essences, so I thought it an even trade.
“Call it a day?” he asked.
Then we heard the yipping. It was coming from all around us. The tall grass already made it hard to see and the darkness didn’t help at all. It was hard to pinpoint how many and where, as the yips crossed and intersected as the things ran circles around us. I figured it was at least a dozen. The creatures in the Biome seemed to like running in packs of twelve.
“Shadow Foxes,” Sunie said, shifting and holding his staff in front of him.
“Guess we deal with these guys and then head out?”
“Sounds good to me,” Sunie said.
Icy fog spread from the end of his staff as he waved it in front of him. The fog drifted into the grasses, sinking towards the ground. The air around us got a little chilly.
The yips continued and turned to yowls, or something like that, as the foxes slid on the ice. We heard a couple crash into each other and chuckled.
“What does the fox say?” I sang as I headed for the closest concentration of the yowls.
“What?” Sunie asked, turning and facing the other direction, where the icy fog hadn’t spread.
“Just something from the past.”
I found the first two foxes just disentangling themselves, snapping and snarling. They were about four feet long, two feet high, but still the sleek body of a fox. Bushy tails, long and thin snout. They were mostly black with gray underbellies, the eyes glowing yellow as both turned to look at me.
Before they could leap, I reached out with my kinetic field, stopping both of them from moving. Not completely motionless, they just moved slowly as I stole their kinetic energy. Foxes were fast. We had some Dire Foxes on Earth and they were a pain to fight.
Reaching the first fox, I grabbed it by the tail, yanking it away from the other. Holding it out at arms length, I swung at the one still on the ground. My Force empowered fist hit it squarely in the underside of the biting jaws, snapping the head back. Not hard enough to snap the neck, but enough to stun it for a bit.
The one I held was squirming. It tried snapping at me, but I had a good grip on its neck, and the way I held it, the claws on its legs couldn’t get at me. I could hear more of the yips around me as the foxes got their footing again. Only had a couple seconds before more would be on me.
With the way it was squirming and snapping, I didn’t want to try to punch it, so I just launched a Force Lance at its head. Or what was left of its head once my Lance pierced it. I dropped the body, pushing away the Notification.
YOU HAVE SLAIN A SHADOW FOX. YOU HAVE GAINED +10 TUTORIAL POINTS AND +10 MULTIVERSAL CREDITS
I heard something rushing at me through the grass. Turning, shifting into a defensive stance, two of the foxes leapt up at me. One went low and the other high, jaws wide open. Those teeth looked sharp. I caught one on my arm, the teeth biting into the leather sleeve but not penetrating the tough material. It was thin leather, but had been infused with Arcanum, making it tougher. Not that I really needed the protection.
The other one I caught with a kick, sending it flying. These two had been quick, I hadn’t been able to catch them in my kinetic field. With its teeth latched onto me, I swung my arm, making the fox hang on for dear life. It couldn’t anymore, going flying into the grass.
I didn’t get any Notifications, which meant those two were still alive. Didn’t have time to chase them down as more charged at me. Three of them. How many did Sunie have to deal with?
He was probably having an easier time with him being a Controller and all. Sometimes being forced to punch things was really aggravating.
But it was a good way to get out aggression.
I kicked another, using the field to slow the other two. That one I didn’t kick far, picking one fox up by the tail and slamming it into the other. The one I’d kicked, I stomped down and snapped its back, ending its life. Brutal, but I wanted to end this quickly. No particular reason, just didn’t want to fight these things for hours. Especially since the chances were high that we’d be attacked again on the way back to the portal.
Between punching, spinning by the tail and kicking, I finished off those three and the next three that attacked. I didn’t hear any more yips or yowls and saw that Sunie had killed the nine or so that had attacked him.
He didn’t look happy, some marks of blood on his leather armor and cloak.
“Stupid things are quick,” he grumbled. “A couple got past. Luckily their attacks don’t do much damage.”
I laughed and started collecting the loot.
YOU HAVE GAINED +1 SHADOW FOX PELT, +2 FOX CLAWS AND +1 SHADOW ESSENCE
“I’ll trade you for any Shadow Essence you get,” I said. “Got a friend back home that could use it.”
“Okay, sounds good,” Sunie replied.
“Is it just me or is it a bit weird that most of the monsters in the Tower don’t seem to have special Abilities?”
Sunie glared at me.
“Great, you just jinxed us.”
I laughed, wondering what word jinx really was in his language and if it had the same meaning or just one of those words the System substituted.
“It’s a combination of things,” Sunie continued to explain. “The first through third floor are meant to be a little easier so the monsters and Dungeons are a bit more straightforward. After that, they tend to get harder. But also, these things do have Abilities, we’re just killing them so fast they don’t get to use them.”
“Ah, so we’re just that good.”
“Exactly,” Sunie said, extending a fist for me to bump.
