Chapter 43: Chapter 43: Howling in the Dark

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Howling in the Dark

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I stepped through the dungeon’s secret entrance with giant dollar signs proverbially flashing in my eyes. How could I not feel giddy when Divah’s guide sent me right into a cave filled with shiny blue gems that I knew would sell for at least fifty silver sceattas a piece on the open market?

“Baldr’s balls, are these all hamingems?” I wondered.

According to the item guide of Divah’s journal, ‘hamingems’ were crystalized essence of a hamingja, which the old Norse Earthers believed was a female guardian spirit that accompanied a human while deciding their luck and happiness. In truth, a hamingja was the personification of good fortune that one could pass on to others through the cultivation of its crystalized form, a hamingem.

These shiny blue gems were growing all over the cave’s walls, leaving me to wonder just whose good luck was being cultivated here and by whom.

“I can figure that out after I’ve plundered a few hamingems,” I grinned.

Yep, as greedy as I was, I couldn’t take all these hamingems for myself. At least not all in one go, because to plunder someone else’s luck without regard also brought the risk of bringing bad luck down on the thief’s head. Or so the story went. Still, I could at least pluck seven of these blue gems from the wall—with seven being the lucky number that kept bad luck at bay—and I did just that with the hunting knife I kept strapped to the back of my belt.

“Note to self, by portable pick ax, the collapsible kind,” I whispered.

I set about my work pulling hamingems off the wall without worrying about monsters stabbing me in the back as a cave filled with an aura of good fortune would have been anathema to beasts formed from the worst emotions known to the realmsverse. Soon enough, my backpack was six gems heavier, and I was feeling immensely satisfied.

“Liara would have loved this…” I gazed down at the last gem I plucked from the wall. “Vargr, why’d I have to ruin my mood like that?”

Grumbling, I tossed the seventh hamingem into my backpack. Then I glanced around the cave, searching for another way out of it besides the one I’d come from.

The cave I’d found myself in wasn’t small, but it wasn’t large enough that the light from my hearthstone couldn’t pierce through to its far end which is where I found another round door. It was intricately carved with geometric shapes indicative of dwarven design, although its round outline was far from what dwarven doors were usually like.

“Maybe a cave dwarf built this place… would explain why the doors look like buttholes,” I reasoned.

It was common knowledge in the realmsverse that a cave dwarf’s anatomy was vastly different from its nobler-looking cousins, the mountain and hill dwarves, particularly in how they interacted with the earth. Cave dwarves mined the ground not with pickaxes and hammers, but with the shovel-like claws that pop out of their hands when digging. And, with their faces so close to the earth when they dig, cave dwarves sometimes swallowed mouthfuls of dirt much like a swimmer swallows pool water. It’s due to this that their stomachs have evolved to accommodate raw earth elements, and, after metabolizing the nutritious stuff, the discarded stuff would need an exit. It was why cave dwarves didn’t wear pants when digging. Well, they mostly dug in the nude which is why digging world cups throughout the realmsverse were considered an adult-only affair.

Now, enough about dwarven anatomy, and back to the exploration, which was easy enough to do as I only needed to walk out that door to discover a similar-looking craggy tunnel leading deeper into what Divah’s guide explained was an interconnected cave system much larger than a simple grotto.

“I know Divah says soloing dungeons is a bad idea, but it can’t hurt to try it out once in a while, right?”

I’d only taken a few steps into that tunnel when a flash of something shiny appeared straight ahead, and I twirled my glaive around to deflect the stone-tipped arrow that had been aimed at my jugular.

“Enemies… but how many?”

From just beyond my hearthstone’s light, I could hear the footfalls of many little feet as they slapped against the stone floor. Soon enough, the first of the fiends appeared within the scope of my light.

This creature was a gray-skinned monster that was about the height and size of a frail ten-year-old kid. It was bald with pointy ears and a large head with wide bulbous yellow eyes, small button noses, and a wide mouth filled with piranha-like teeth. It was a “Goblin,” I grinned.

Thank the gods—I needed an outlet for all this pent-up frustration I’d been feeling.

The first of the goblins carried a large jagged bone jaw that it wielded like a scimitar. It rushed at me, swinging wildly at my chest like a kid who’d had too much candy to eat, but I rushed in before it could complete its swing and pushed my glaive into its open mouth.

“I don’t need salt grenades to deal with you,” I whispered.

I swung my hand to the right so that my glaive ripped through that frail goblin’s head, killing it in one blow.

A second goblin came charging forward. This one had a stone ax in its hand which the monster swung down on my crotch area—the nerve of this bastard—but I dodged it by stepping aside and then sent my knee up into the goblin’s face. I followed that knee with a downward swing of my glaive that decapitated the monster easy peasy.

There was no time to relish these quick victories, however, as a third goblin was already swinging its bone club at me while roaring unintelligible insults my way.

I replied in kind by screaming profanities into its face while ducking away from that wild swing. Then, I pulled out the spray bottle clipped to my belt with my free hand and pointed it right between the goblin’s eyes.

“Eat salt mace!” I roared.

A liquid salt solution splashed onto the goblin’s face, burning the monster’s eyes and leaving the creature vulnerable for my glaive to slink into its chest.

I realized from the other night’s raid that I’d become over-reliant on Flameheart’s spells and I was burning through my magic too quickly with each battle. So, this was the perfect fight to use only the skills and tools I’d brought with me to see if I’d improved beyond my obvious increase in magic talent. Luckily, there were four remaining goblins to help with my tune-up.

“I don’t want unbalanced stats where my intelligence is far higher than the others…”

I blew a pinch of fairy dust at the next goblin, forcing it to inhale the natural hallucinogenic compound that made it all dopy-faced and unable to defend against my glaive’s blade sliding across its throat.

“Ugh, that was half a sceat worth of dust… what an expensive kill,” I grumbled.

At least that goblin died happily. I couldn’t say the same for its companion.

The next goblin to arrive within my field of view fell to my hunting knife embedded into its neck which I’d thrown just as it approached me. It was such a flashy swing of my right hand too that the goblin who arrived next failed to notice how I’d also sprinkled iron filings on the ground with my left hand.

Now, even with this awesome sleight-of-hand, the iron filings I’d thrown into the ground were little more than stuff one would use to play around with magnets. However, to a weak monster’s bare feet they might as well have been burning coals.

I rushed forward and thrust my glaive deep into the goblin’s belly. Credit to the little bastard that it didn’t want to go down without a fight. With its dying breath, the goblin held onto my glaive’s handle so I couldn’t pull it out of the creature in time to block the approach of another goblin.

“Keep it,” I chuckled.

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Taking into account our height difference, I jumped over my new assailant’s wide ax swing and landed by the side of a goblin’s corpse to retrieve the hunting knife embedded in its neck.

I was no knife expert, but Draconic Blade Arts made me proficient with most blade-type weapons, and a knife was no exception. A parry here, a block there, and soon enough my knife sat snugly in the chest of the goblin ax wielder.

Interestingly enough, the final goblin proved smarter than all its fellows because it had the good sense to run away from the killer slaughtering its mates.

Now, I could have let it go to warn the other goblins about me, but I was feeling very impish, and I’d yet to fully relieve myself of the stress that came with remembering a certain she-elf’s amber eyes.

I sighed. “Why’d you have to show up in my head now.”

With irritation fueling my throw, I flung my knife so hard that it penetrated the last goblin’s back and sent the creature tumbling a good deal away. It was dead by the time I caught up to it.

“Level sixteen. Level sixteen. Level sixteen” I chanted softly.

Well, it did seem like my physical stats had increased enough that hunting goblins now felt like I was bullying weaklings. It might be time to visit the Academy’s ‘Training Center’ for proper stat point allocation too.

“Divah was right to send me to the Academy.”

It didn’t take me long to farm materials from the nine goblin corpses; some small vials of goblin blood, six pairs of goblin ears, and just enough air-tight bags for two goblin hearts. I had to give up on the rest of the materials though as I didn’t pack a farming kit with me this time.

I glanced down at the last vial of blood I’d siphoned out of a goblin’s corpse and was reminded of how Liara had used the stuff to paint a custom protection rune on Morph’s shield back when we were exploring Lugh’s Lament.

“Is this that ‘guilty conscience’ I’d heard so much about?” I wondered aloud.

Yes, I admit that I was feeling shitty for choosing vengeance over Liara. But there were some things men don’t compromise on.

That’s when I heard it again—that same low howl that had prompted me down into the cliffside. It bounced off the walls, creating an eerie echo that reminded me of the chanting of monks.

A rare shiver passed through me. It should have been reason enough to be cautious. But the howling helped to vanish thoughts of guilt from my mind, and that made me want to seek out its source.

According to Divah’s guide, the secret entrance I’d entered bypassed the first and second floors of Grendel’s Grotto. That meant I was on the dungeon’s third floor. However, as I mowed my way through another patrol of goblins, I realized that this dungeon was surprisingly easy. I assumed this was by design as Grendel’s Grotto was supposedly a controlled learning environment for the Academy’s novices.

This line of thought was quick to slip away from me, however, as I once again heard the howling of a beast almost as if whatever was making that sound was calling to me personally.

“Didn’t Divah mention something about songs?”

I remembered a warning, but I couldn’t remember what it was about.

“Something about wolves… and… what was it again?”

There was a haze on my mind that I couldn’t shake off the more I heard that low howling, which, weirdly enough, sort of sounded like a song to me now. Like a lullaby that a mother sang to the baby in her arms. I felt compelled to chase after it.

I hurried across the interconnected caverns, choosing to dim my hearthstone’s slight so I could slink past other goblin patrols rather than waste time on small fry. At this pace, I quickly found the location of the howling which I could hear emanating from somewhere beyond the tunnel I trekked across.

“Kenaz,” I whispered.

The dim glow of my hearthstone flared, illuminating the cavern I stepped into. Light bounced off the stalactites shining down from the high ceiling like jagged spears, while stalagmites jutted out of the craggy ground like shark teeth. At the far end of the cavern, right before the staircase leading down to the next floor, was a wolf as white as freshly fallen snow. Pinned underneath this wolf’s front paws—her chestnut hair splayed out on the ground—was Liara Lockwood.

“What is she doing here?”

The she-elf hadn’t noticed me because her eyes were glued to the white wolf that kept her pinned to the cavern floor. But, even from where I stood, I could see the fear clear on her face.

Quick as a panther, I rushed forward, my glaive in both hands.

“Let her”—I jumped over an outcropping of rock and briefly hung in the air—“go!”

Strange—the wolf made no move to dodge or counter. It just stood there with its all-too-human blue eyes—an exact mirror of mine—glaring at me with a glint of recognition. It let out a soft, low howl that was a far cry from the blood-curdling howls of the patchwork wolves.

Despite this almost friendly greeting, I didn’t hesitate to swing my glaive down on its snout—and as soon as my blade struck the wolf, the beast disappeared like a ghost whisked away into the beyond, taking the vision of a frightened Liara with it.

“What the—”

I stumbled to the ground in surprise, my breath heavy and my mind racing.

“Could that have been a… fylgja?”

I wasn’t sure what that vision was, but the realmsverse equivalent of a spirit guide that visited people in their waking hours kind of fit the bill here. Maybe. Fylgja visits were a very rare phenomenon.

“Or am I finally going insane from all the dying?”

The ground rumbled beneath my feet, leaving me no time to contemplate what I’d just experienced.

I glanced to my left, and sure enough, climbing up the staircase was a vile creature I’d only ever heard spoken of in stories.

“Vargr… aren’t you supposed to be a dungeon boss?” I got back to my feet and stepped away from the stairs. “Why are you coming up here now, Grendel?”