Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Tom was crouched on the cliff, looking down at the creature below him. It had a rank of around ninety. It was, of course, hard to tell. For special monsters, their levels, experience, well, everything about them went wonky. 

It was a strange beast whose torso was the size of a minibus and a long tail that doubled that length. Six short stumpy legs under it and then directly above each leg, two-thirds of the way to the top was a further six arms. 

The creature moved slowly through the berry bushes, the arms on each side moving independently to pluck the fruits and fill up woven buckets that, when they got full, it would pass up the arms to the mouth and it would pour the berries in. Chew three times with red liquid running out of its lips before it swallowed.

It was the same each time.

The creature was an omnivore because when he had found it, the animal had been busily eating the result of a successful hunt. A deer that had been brought down by an arrow before being skinned. Whatever the monster was, it had what Tom mentally labelled as ‘Tool Smarts’. While it was still an animal, it possessed the instinctive ability to use weapons. Looped around its neck was a pouch which contained its bow and an assortment of swords and short spears. 

That, by itself, was problematic. The uncertain rank… was equally as concerning. 

Everything told Tom that he should run.

Tom waited and watched from the tops of the trees. While he was up here out of its line of sight, he was mostly safe and advancement in this trial was heavily correlated with risk. He would not abandon a challenge while there was a chance of success. 

As he looked, he noticed more details. The feet had long claws on them, so if he let himself be trampled, then that would be the end. The arms moved independently. It was not ambidextrous it was much better than that. Six arms, not two, and each of them, based on how they picked berries, could fence with a separate opponent. The tail had a spiny protrusion on the back like a mace’s head, which was wider than he was. While he had not seen it use the tail, it looked deadly and monsters here rarely pretended strength.

It was strong, a creature he had never encountered before, let alone killed.

Tom wet his lips as he felt the familiar determination fill him. It was like a walking bank of contribution points. 

He shut his eyes, and he was in the system room. 

The shop flashed lights to try to get his attention, but he ignored that. At some point, he would change the settings to make it less flashy, but for now he sort of liked the pretentious in your face capitalism that the current setup evoked. It was funny and there was so little humour in his life. 

The creature he had seen was worth a question, and he walked up to the blank wall and the counter above it. 

Fifteen. 

That would be enough. Dux was limited to yes or no responses, but Tom knew the mind behind those answers. It was smart, omnipresent even. She understood the intent behind his questions. Especially key terms he had defined previously.

“Can I defeat it?”

“Yes.”

He flinched in surprise at the answer. 

The counter in the corner dropped to fourteen.

That was not the response he had been expecting. He had expected a giggling no as an answer. That would have told him not today and probably not for years.

Yet the answer was yes and defeat was something by necessity that he had defined carefully. In this question, it meant if I approach the fight with my current skills and weapons with the right strategy will I only lose one time out of a hundred. And is the chance of me dying, being captured or permanently impaired no more than one in ten thousand? 

Basically, he was happy to fail, providing he could escape and reset. 

It had answered yes, but that monster was clearly too strong for him. Not only was it higher ranked, it had those multiple arms and all those weapons around its neck. He was an old hand at fighting higher ranked beasts, but this was not just a beast, it was a tool user as well. 

“Hmmm.”

That meant there was a strategy he could use.

“Is it vulnerable to my spark?”

“No.”

Tom immediately kicked himself for his poorly worded question. He should have said to my magic.

“Is it vulnerable to my magic?”

“No.”

The answer was physical then. Tom opened his eyes and studied it from his perch high above. It had moved forward a couple of steps and, judging by its progress so far, it had another five minutes in this berry patch before it moved on. Try as he might, Tom could not see any revealing weaknesses. 

He shut his eyes and returned to the shop room.

“To defeat it, do I need to prepare something?”

“No.”

Shit. His mind had expected the answer to be yes. Some weird poison or construction of a trap.

“No magic or environmental answer,” he pondered out loud. “And its rank is a ninety with apparent weapon skills.” He stopped thinking he had already used four days’ worth of questions and they were the most important resource he had access to. Now that he had personal strength, they were far more valuable than even safe areas.

“To defeat it, do I need to exploit a physical vulnerability?”

“Yes.”

“To defeat it, is there a specific spot I need to target?”

“Question’s too broad.”

“Shit.” he whispered to himself. Dux usually answered that question. He thought back to previous times he had played this twenty question game. Nope, his phrasing was wrong.

“To defeat it, is there a specific spot I need to strike?”

“No.”

What? He felt like screaming it out. Something was there, just out of his reach. His mind was going crazy trying to tease it out. Tom opened his eyes and studied it again. No weakness to magic, no specific spot to strike, no need to prepare anything in advance, which just implied he jumped on it and fought. 

Not down low, he thought to himself. Those claws were lethal. 

Front on? Tom examined it carefully. If he attacked it from the dead on the front, two arms could definitely defend the face. It also had a nasty beak appendage that he would be unlikely to survive if it bit him. Finally, there was no specific spot he needed to strike, so it was not like attacking the face and getting the eyes were the answer.

From the back? That tail looked dangerous, but the arms would be out of action, which made it doable. 

Blind spot? Nope, it had four eyes, two front and centre that were designed for doing fine work that required depth perception, and then two on the side of its head. Bulging out, sort of like cow eyes, the bloody thing had a three and sixty field of vision.

How about the top? Maybe. That back was broad and those arms might struggle to reach it. The tail swung low. Ponderous and with that heavy mace on its end, Tom doubted it had the flexibility to curl up and protect the back.

He returned to the system room.

“To defeat it, do I need to get onto its back?”

“Yes.”

Inside, he did a little fist pump. Twenty questions for the win. So far, he had only used eight. It was not a done deal yet. 

“To defeat it, do I need to get on its back near its head?”

“No.”

“How about the middle back?”

“No.”

“Between the tail and the middle back.”

“Yes.”

He had four questions left. Should he try to confirm immediately or search for more detail?

“Do I need to drop from a tree onto it?”

“Yes.”

There was nothing else he could think of. It was time for the money question and if the answer was no. He would need to retreat with twelve questions wasted unless he ran into this again some time in the future. “With my current build and plan, will I defeat it?”

“Yes.”  

A relieved sigh went through Tom’s body. Current build incorporated everything. It did not mean in five minutes to let his mana regenerate, or if he used some of his built-up experience to buy a skill or object, or even if he worked out something new. It was now without changes, then could he kill it?

With a satisfied smile, he opened his eyes and then crawled along the branches to position himself in the best spot to fall upon it. 

He paused and then used his advanced spatial inventory to replace his bare feet with claw boots, then he adjusted the armour to bring out the sharp blades at the elbow. Finally, he summoned his wyvern claw daggers.

He was ready. Mentally, he rehearsed his plan. Drop to land on top of it on the lower middle back. Use his clawed feet and daggers to secure his position and then presumably dig down through the thick leather skin till he killed it.

Simple.

Silently, he dropped, leading with his daggers.

They slammed into either side of the backbone, then the rest of him crashed onto the creature’s back. His breath was blown out of him and it took him an instant to reorientate. The thing was tougher than he had hoped, as his daggers had only penetrated halfway to the hilt. He was not even sure whether they had got fully through the skin, but the handhold they provided was solid. His feet scrambled momentarily before those ultra sharp claws dug in, freeing up his arms to start the fight.

There was a panicked noise from the monster. It stopped and Tom saw it grab at the weapons in the sheath on the neck and he remembered why he was here.

Kill or be killed.

He yanked the right dagger out and started stabbing vigorously to pierce the thick skin. He was used to this method of killing larger animals and the arm movements while frenetic were automatic. Instead of focusing on that, Tom monitored his surroundings. Swords, spears, the head craned at him so one eye could see him in totality. 

Tom considered using spark to blind it and then abandoned the idea. The eye was a metre too far away and it would be a waste of energy. If that was important to the fight, Dux would have answered differently.

His dagger kept thrusting. 

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The enormous body under him twisted and bucked. The movements were violent, but his feet and footholds were too strong. They failed to unbalance him, let alone knock him off.

The entire back went up then down, leaving him attached only by blades, then it launched itself up and his nose smacked into the hard skin and thin scratchy hair. Tom’s eyes watered and he stabbed again. The position he was in was not at all precarious, it had done its best and maybe blood nose wouldn’t phase him at all. Even importantly, the middle and back arms couldn’t get the angle to threaten him. The front ones could, but the spear was not long enough for it to reach him. Dux had not lied. The monster couldn’t reach him here.

The dagger slid in smoothly and when he pulled it away, it was covered with a dark blue liquid. He was through the skin. The next thrust went in all the way to the hilt. 

He yanked it out. 

The proof of concept was complete, and he was through the first section. The dagger disappeared into his soul storage, and the small machete used mainly for butchering animals came out. 

He started hacking, trying to widen the gap the dagger had created even while his eyes roamed around constantly searching for threats. 

The monster smacked into a tree, which broke. 

The machete had opened up a foot wide gap in the skin. Progress, but hardly significant to the creature it was fighting. In human terms, that was only a small graze.

Tom was launched forward.  

What?

The beast was now pacing backwards.

Why?

Tom peered behind him to see if he could ascertain the monster’s plans.

The tree it had crashed into earlier had fallen and the animal was planning to go back under it. 

“No!” he snarled. Tom did not know why he had thought all he would have to do to kill a creature that was statistically way too strong for him to challenge was to get to a secret position and hack away till it died.

Things were never that easy.

The tree had been broken about a metre and a half up and then fallen to the side. The break was not clean. It was still attached to trunk and the branches in the tree’s crown cushioned the other end. It was behind them, sort of positioned like a limbo pole. Worse for Tom, it was at his height.

That was not an accident. It had broken the tree at that height deliberately. The monster was going to back itself under the tree and then try to scrap him off.

Tom wondered about whether he should jump off or hunker down. While the monster’s trick was clever, it had not been executed perfectly. The trunk was a little too high. If he flattened himself, he should be able to go under it. 

Smart monsters, he hated them.

While this attempt for it might end up as a disappointment, it would adapt and learn. Time was not in his favour and he needed to kill faster. If this tree failed, then the monster would set up a second tree and do it, or better or even worse, roll and squish him.

With a thought, the machete returned to his expensive soul storage and was replaced by his precious sword claw. It was indisputably the greatest weapon he possessed. Created from the claw of a giant pterodactyl with a wingspan of almost five metres, it had only a slight curve to it and the magically sharp cutting edge was as long as his arm. 

The monster had a winning strategy unless Tom could beat it.

He pushed with his muscles instantly springing up to be standing on the monster’s back. It was dangerous and Tom knew he did not have long before he would have to crouch down to avoid the weapon attacks.

Tom put that threat out of his mind and focused. 

He plunged the weapon down into the gap in the skin that his heavy knife had opened up. The undefended flesh offered almost no resistance, and the sword plunged through the hilt. While he pulled it out, Tom twisted and rotated the blade to open the wound.

The monster continued to reverse.

He was running out of time. He thrust the weapon back into a different spot, knowing that the chance of hitting anything vital was almost zero, but that was not why he was doing it. 

A glance behind him.  

Time had run out.

He dropped flat onto his stomach. 

The creature continued to move backward. The tree trunk was above his feet but there was clearance and despite the slight upward slope of the creature’s back, it would be tight, but it would miss him.

The animal rocked, shifted, and he felt the entire body rise.

No!

Smart animals he fucken hated them! 

Tom tried to react, but his legs were already pressing into the trunk, pinning him. The monster took another step backwards and the weight of the trunk squished him into the rock hard skin. Prior to the trial, that single step would have pulverised his pelvis and created so much internal bleeding that there was no chance of survival, but Tom was super human now. Super yes, but not invincible and that much force crashing into him hurt. He winced. Because his arms were still free, he moved his sword claw more frantically. He had to find a way to kill it quickly. Once he got out from under the tree, he would switch to a spear and see if that could put holes in something vital.

It stepped again, and he gasped in agony as the wood rolled up and over his poor body into a new position. It was crushing his middle back and there was a stub of a branch poking into his left side. 

No!

The monster stepped back once more.

He screamed as the trunk rolled over while he clung desperately to not be dislodged. He pushed his head down and he felt his skull being squeezed for a moment and then suddenly it was past him. Red blood splattered on the dusty leathery skin under him. That branch stub had taken a chunk of flesh with it. 

Touch Heal closed the wounds before blood loss was a consideration. At this point it was automatic and while he had mana, his healing would make a troll envious. 

The monster was still moving backwards, with the broken tree being carried up the back. Then it stopped arcing its back and returned to its usual posture. The tree dropped half a metre.

It charged forward. 

“No,”

He pushed himself into a squat, ripped his claw feet out of the skin with a practiced shuffle, and then jumped up and over the trunk as it rushed underneath him. He landed heavily, scrambled for a moment till his feet dug in properly once more. 

Blue black blood was running down the creature from the wound and he sort of wished that he owned a proper combat axe but he had never got one as a reward and he wasn’t going to waste experience on items, as for crafting, well he would prefer to fight with his fists than to rely on a weapon he had crafted himself because he was pretty sure such a hypothetical monstrosity would break on the first swing. 

He got out his second claw sword and used the two in tandem. He focused on cutting open the animal. He swung like a berserker. His blades indiscriminately chopping skin and flesh to expand the wound. Chunks of meat went flying.

The creature had turned around and was charging to go under the trunk once more. With a thought, he stored both blades and pushed him into the cavity he had carved into the beast.

A Tom sized hole. The monster got its head under the tree and then the trunk rolled down its back. Tom was mostly under the line of the scales, but not fully. It was like being hit by an ogre’s club. Ribs and bones in his back shattered because it had launched itself upwards right when the trunk was above him.

Touch heal a moment later patched him back together. He pushed out of the hole. It was hard to see through the dark blood that covered him.

But his desperate manoeuvre had almost worked, and it represented a clear path to victory. 

He sat up and resisted the urge to give into blood lust and just stab and stab the creature that had hurt him. Instead, he used his sword to carve out what must have been a fifty kilogram stake. Then he tossed it out. 

Blue blood was everywhere. 

Disgusting.

However, there was more space now. He rotated, pushed his legs into the hole he had created. His swords disappeared, and he made precise but hurried cuts with his daggers. Slash, slash, then toss out a chunk of meat.

Rinse and repeat. 

He watched as the monster ran at the tree again. He plunged his face forward, pushing his head into the soft slimy blood. Lowering himself down so that his body was completely inside the monsters. 

The tree smacked against his hip, rattling him, but touch heal fixed the dislocation almost instantly. Far calmer now, Tom sat up and spat out the blood that had got in his mouth and kept cutting. More steaks went flying. 

The creature was alternating between roaring and squealing. It tried the tree again. Then, running at a pace, it tipped itself over and did a crushing roll. Briefly Tom was squeezed between the flesh and the ground, but suffered no damage this time.

He was going to do it. 

Optimistically he attacked the back bone but his daggers bounced off with barely scratching it. Not for the first time, he regretted being too cheap to get that axe. With a sigh, he cut toward the centre of the monster. His dagger went through a thick membrane and a liquid spewed out. It stung and sizzled when it hit him.

Stomach acid.

Tom repositioned and then made a series of cuts lower down on what must have been the stomach wall. Acid poured out, but the important thing was that it was not directed at him. Instead, it pooled inside the creature.

The roars went up an octave.

His ears hurt, and now he wanted it to shut up. He kept hacking and went through a rubbery pipe as thick as his arm. Blue blood shot out of it like it came out of a hose. The cavity he had created rapidly filled. Tom was literally sitting in blood up to his chest. The monster did one of its desperate rolls and bathtubs’ worth of blood were emptied. He only held his position because he manifested both his swords back and had driven them into the creature’s flesh to act as piton. 

The pipe he had cut through which must have been a major artery kept hosing out blood.

Then it slowed, sending out sluggish bursts. The monster stopped moving and liquid stopped spraying out of the artery. Absolutely exhausted by the physical effort he had to exert to dig into the creature, he pulled himself out. 

He looked down and saw that he was blue. Every part of him was covered in blood.

“Not good, Tom.” He muttered. The area he was in was hostile and blood attracted predators.

“Need to find a stream,” he told himself while looking around. 

On top of the monster, a small glowing mote appeared which would contain a system reward that would be generated based on the parameters set by the council of GODs. This tutorial was the same as the world they would eventually be sent to for the contest. Everything was the same. The monster variety, the reward system, the trials, the system room and even how experience could be spent. The only difference was the daily question. 

Tom frowned at that. Maybe he needed to switch strategies, so he did not have to rely on that.  

“Contribution Points Awarded, one hundred and forty two.” A voice that Tom knew only he could hear said. 

That was a lot.

“Experience awarded.” 

Tom pulled himself out of the memory and looked at Jeffrey. Had that idiot really just accused him of never having left the starting area?

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