Chapter 13

In the early thirties, while the rest of the world was experiencing a hard come down from the roaring twenties, an Australian Major named Meredith was given a simple task. He was to cull an invasive species plaguing local farmers in a venture later known as The Great Emu war. And he didn’t skimp on resources. Meredith brought a trained army, transported by truck, armed with machine-guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. 

He lost.

Trained men with machine-guns lost to birds.

I say all this to provide context, for how a less experienced, much more sparsely armed boy might find himself in mortal danger from a field of rabid flowers.

I yelped and dropped my crossbow, grabbing the flower by its thick stem. Luckly, it hadn’t bitten directly onto my hand - my bracer was keeping its jaws open, even though some of the teeth had sunk into my exposed hand. 

Its mouth was red, its teeth bloody as it held onto me with the bite force of a pitbull. The movements of its body were bursts of ravenous speed interspersed with lifeless stillness, clearly hinting at an ambush predator. But like a snake, I’d grabbed it too high on the neck to give it an angle to bite me somewhere more vulnerable. I hoped.

Vines wrapped around my wrist, threatening to overcome my own strength. 

I fought back the panic. It was becoming increasingly hard to hold on to, but it had no interest in getting away. Maybe I could use that mindless ferocity against it. 

Thinking fast, I let go of the stem while simultaneously dropping my dagger out of the hand the monster was gripping onto.  Snatching the dagger out of the air with my free hand, I thrust it straight into the monster’s mouth.  

Just as I had anticipated, it didn’t try to retreat, instead trying to double down on its viselike grip. I could only hope my armor held. With painstaking finesse, I quickly twisted the blade further  into the creature’s mouth, trying to avoid cutting my own hand. Thrusting the tip edge back and forth, I desperately aimed for whatever primordial lump this thing might have for a brain. 

It began to panic, vines unraveling from my arm and sinking into the ground instead and pulling me with surprising strength. But I was making progress now. There was no way I was letting a freaking flower kill me. 

There was a tearing sensation of the blade cut through a barrier into something softer. The flower dropped instantly, finally releasing my bloody hand. 

Shaking all over, I counted twice to make sure I still had all my fingers.

The clearing had taken on a more sinister feel now, previous serenity all but forgotten. Every patch of high grass was a suspect, every swath of shadow hid a potential threat. I quickly picked my crossbow up and back away from the dead… Snakebloom? Flowerfang? I needed to come up with a better name. 

“Meeeeeeat.” Inhuman voices hissed, their intent obvious. Mostly satisfied that there was nothing in my immediate vicinity that would ambush me, I spotted more of the flowerfangs parting the tall grass as they ambled towards me There was about a dozen of them grouped together. I caught a glimpse of  a mess of entwined vines at their base, green tendrils sinking into the earth before the next could move forward. 

They’re strong and quick to strike, but dumb and slow. Slightly slower than human walking speed. But the vines give them range, have to be careful of their reach. And if just one latches onto me and pulls me into that group, I’m finished. My biggest advantage is how dumb they are. If they had kept quiet and waited for me to walk into a patch of them…

If not for the armor I purchased, I might be bleeding out now or maybe even have lost my hand. I glanced down at the wound in irritation, noting that it was still bleeding. My armor had given me some coverage, but it left my entire hand unprotected, leaving half an oval-shaped imprint of torn skin. On the plus side, the bracer was a little scuffed but still looked fully functional.

There was a pained whisper from close by. I hopped away quickly, heart racing, and glanced down. 

The fucking flowerfang was still alive, and slowly squirmed towards me while I was distracted. A single vine tried to snake out to grab me, but it was sluggish and uncoordinated. I didn’t have long, but this was an opportunity. 

I grabbed a convenient branch from the ground and pinned its head down, making sure it wasn’t able to wriggle free before getting a secure grip. I held it up from directly behind the base of the flower head so it couldn’t bite me. 

<Blade of Woe’s> effect kicked in. It seemed to only work when I was concentrating directly on a target, and I had been pretty distracted while being gnawed on before. The last time I’d used it successfully, on Wife-beater guy, all I was able to see was vital organs in red and weak points in yellow. This was different. More detailed. Maybe because I was closer? There was a shade of blue around the entire mouth and seed area of the head that probably indicated armor. The petals around its head turned light orange, and I noted a dark red where its stalk thickened into a bulbous assembly of vines. 

I think I found the root of the problem.

I reversed my grip on the dagger and plunged it into the flowerfang’s base. The flowerfang made a brief wailing noise and went totally limp. Most of its petals wilted and shed, only a few remaining, leaving spindly brown beneath. Its head twisted unnaturally to face the sun, then went still. 

<Flowerfang defeated.>

<System Notification: The skill One-Handed has increased from level 3 to level 4>

<System Warning: As One-Handed is not a traditional Ordinator skill, it will level more slowly than skills attuned to class.>

<Drop received:—>

You have no idea what you are doing here. You’ll never make it.

I had to shut down the system feed. My nerves were spiking with the information overload, not to mention <Jaded Eye> wasn’t helping at all. Plus, I had almost overlooked the obvious - a dumb monster had tricked me into thinking it was dead when I should have realized I didn’t get a system message for “killing” it the first time. 

There were plenty of questions to be asked later. Questions like why was I receiving simple skill notifications now? Why had the skill started at level 3 instead of 1? And what was that penalty about?

But they were questions for a time when I wasn’t in a hostile environment, potentially surrounded by things trying to eat me while I was on the brink of a freakout. 

I surveyed the oncoming group. They were still tied together, but now I knew where their weak points were. 

A plan started coming together in my mind. I was still afraid. But there was a vicious excitement that deafened the fear. So many things in my life felt insurmountable. There were challenges with no ends, battles with no rewards. But this was achievable. And there was a reward as tangible as it was intoxicating.

I was so absorbed in the feeling that the idea of stepping back onto the elevator and retreating never even occurred to me. 

I unholstered my crossbow and took a moment to review the description. 

<Quick Hand Crossbow>

<Item Description: A tool of rogues and assassins, compact but silent and deadly in the right hands. Features mechanism for faster rate of fire.>

It was only a Common rarity item, but well made with some kind of dark wood and blackened metal. Unfortunately, it had really crude sights. It was just the metal spring bar that held a loaded bolt in place with nothing for a front post. The limbs were the strangest part, with a circular puck of a ratchet gear connecting them together where they were mounted on the foregrip. As for the bolts, they were short and thick, made of heavy wood with a solid metal tip and only two fletchings.

I sighted down at the nearest flowerfang, trying to judge the trajectory. My first shot went wide and I was surprised as the crossbow made a whirring noise and the center gear spun up. The limbs almost immediately cocked back on their own, ready for me to load the next bolt. Self-cocking, neat.

My next shot landed in the mess of slithering vines, not hurting anything and disappearing all together. I wouldn’t be getting that bolt back. This was not a deadly weapon, at least not in my hands.

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The crossbow was a challenge to shoot with its terrible sights  and heavy trigger bar. This was vastly different from the handgun my father trained me to use. It was whisper quiet though, making only a dull twang when it fired.

It took a couple more tries of experimenting before a bolt finally hit the intended target. The metal tip ricocheted off a flowerfang’s tough armored face. Disappointing, but I’d suspected as much. The crossbow and bolts were both only Common rarity items.

The flowersfangs grew more agitated as they drew closer, their plant-like bodies quivering with anticipation, teeth gnashing and vines grasping at the air before them. 

Fine. I smiled. I need them to get closer anyway. .

Loading another bolt, I stood my ground as the mob shambled closer and closer. I figured the optimal range for this thing was 10’, probably even less. I would be cutting this close.

Just seconds before they were close enough to grab me, I fired a shot at the base of the lead flowerfang and danced away. A vine lashed out, thorns whizzing by my face as I ducked under it instinctually. I nearly stumbled, surprised by my reaction time. I felt lighter on my feet, too. 

Agility was a good call. Better make the most of it and get in position.

<Flowerfang defeated.>

My risk had paid off, the bolt easily piercing through the soft root bulb from about six feet away and striking the monster’s vitals. Still, that was cutting it too close to keep trying the same tactic again. Also, weird that it used my name for the monster. Was I the first to face one or did the system just go with what was easy for quick communications?

I moved around the bouquet of flowerfangs(™), giving them a wide berth as I retreated toward the end of the clearing fenced in by tall trees. I needed some space to think. There was a small voice in my head, chiding me for not testing my abilities and gear more before I was in a life or death scenario, but this was in some ways the ideal situation to explore it. I was up against monsters that were slow and only dangerous if I was foolish enough to let them get close. 

Was that part of the test for this level of the dungeon? Seeing if I was dumb enough to charge into what looked like a bunch of weak and harmless opponents like some human weedwhacker. It did make a sort of sense, if the dungeon could detect that my best weapon was <Blade of Woe> at Uncommon rarity. 

I shuddered, clamping down hard on a panic attack. They would have torn me to pieces.

Okay sure, I could have experimented more with Probability Spiral outside the dungeon, but playing around with an ability that seemed to innately make things go wrong on random strangers who were on edge with the events of the past week struck me as a terrible idea. 

Then I noticed something. The monstrous bouquet of flowerfangs seemed to be moving slightly slower now. The one I had killed was still being dragged along with the rest of the group, tangled up in the communal root system and weighing them down.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I needed to kill more links.

Studying the group, I noticed that one of them seemed like a good choice for another experiment. Slightly smaller than the others and particularly vicious, it snapped randomly at the two neighbors at either side as they slithered towards me. 

Probability Spiral. I held out my hand and called the ability, aiming for the problem flowerfang’s movement vines. Some failed to pierce earth, getting tangled up with the neighbor’s roots on the left instead, causing both flowerfangs to stumble into each other. The problem flowerfang hissed angrily with scrabbling noises. 

Quickly, I used Probability Spiral  again, barely feeling any fatigue thanks to my latest feat. This time, I aimed for the flowerfang to the right of the problem one, causing its roots to tangle as well and further  joining the three of them together. 

That was all it took, the problem flowerfang in the middle going berserk. It lashed out, first at the flowerfang on the left and then at the right, biting chunks of petals and green vines off. Both flowerfangs obliged by turning on the middle one and literally tearing it to pieces. However, the little guy had some real fight in him, latching onto the root bulb of the one closest to the pack and chomping down before it was beheaded.

<Flowerfang defeated.>

<Flowerfang defeated.>

The one that was left was wounded, but free from the group now that it had ripped the fiesty one to pieces. It rushed toward me, much faster now that it wasn’t bound to the others. I gave it a savage grin, and said the one word I knew it would understand.

“Meat.” 

It screeched like a banshee as I lured it in, its damaged vines scrambling for purchase on the ground. Predictably, it came at me in a straight line, no attempt at dodging. When it was close enough for me to be sure, I fired my bolt directly in the root bulb centermass. It shrieked one last time before doing the whole death deflowering thing.

<Flowerfang defeated.>

I turned back to the bouquet of flowerfangs, which was moving even slower now with three tangled up corpses mixed in. Only faintly fatigued from the back-to-back use of Probability Spiral, I felt confident that I could now shoot at the group with impunity. My aim and familiarity with the crossbow had improved and with each death the whole group of monsters would move slower and slower. 

Jog within range, use Probability Spiral to tie it up for a moment, shoot the root bulb. One by one, I slew them all using the same tactic. I was a little concerned by how easy it was for me now, maybe even fun. A small part of me still rejected this whole situation as a hallucination, but that voice was easily overwhelmed by the piercing death squeals of dying flowerfangs and kill notifications.  

The central flowerfang was actually the hardest, as I could barely see its root bulb through all the other tangled corpses. It took several shots and I was down to my last couple of bolts before I finally managed to kill it, green juices spurting out on the ground. 

<Adaptive Dungeon, Second Floor has been cleared.>

<XP Reward: M>

<Congratulations! You are the first to clear this floor of the Adaptive Dungeon>

<You are currently ranked 1st on the Leaderboard!>

<System error. User name not found. Placeholder will be used.>

<Bonus Reward: +2 to Perception>

A sense of accomplishment washed over me as I collapsed in the clearing, using a small incline of grass as a pillow. Even the headache from the Perception increase couldn’t dampen my mood. It elevated further when I finally read the message feed I’d been ignoring, especially the last part. 

<Level Up: Ordinator has reached LVL 4.> 

<Level Up: Ordinator has reached LVL 5.>

<Ordinator has reached LVL 5. A new Ordinator branch can now be accessed.>

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