Chapter 45: 5- Fortune Smiles Upon You!

“You kin stick around out here while me an’ me faithful companion do the dirty work, if ye wanna take the coward’s path.”

Kyessy’s expression darkened considerably, and in one smooth movement she scooped Corbin up and unceremoniously plopped him inside the transformed boulder. He fell far enough to take a single point of damage, but rather than give her any guff, he turned his attention to sniffing out any trouble. Prissy entered next, followed by Kyessy afterwards. She spent a minute staring around into the darkness, but eventually she plucked up her willpower (probably not wanting to be outdone by a stak’n felinian) and lent her torchlight to their investigation.

Corbin smelled them before he saw them: something shaggy and stuck in the dank cold, somewhere below them. 

“We have bogeys,” he said. 

“Bogeys? Meanin’ boogers?”

“What type of creature is that?” Kyessy asked.

“I mean opponents. We have monsters down in the cellar.”

“You canna see–”

“Dog, remember? I smell things.”

In fact, he could Inspect just by smell. 

 

You have inspected the monsters: 

Lesser Flimplings

Level 9 beasts

160/160 HP, 165/165 HP and 290/290 HP

Flimplings are smaller versions of the larger savannah flimps of the great grassy seas of the east. They always serve a much larger broodmare and will fight to the death to protect her.

Also, they’re fond of hugs. Big spiny hugs.

 

“Kyessy, you ever fought flimplings before?”

She made a disgusted sound, and had already nocked an arrow. 

“Okay, strategy: Kyessy, you entangle, while–”

The flimplings didn’t like the idea of allowing him to strategize, because both of them exploded from the stairwell at the far side of the room. They reminded him of a sloth-looking creature out of Pokemon, came loping out of the darkness with these serene grins on their faces, and a row of sharp plates running across each belly, with serrated edges like a two man crosscut saw. 

Hugs indeed. God, it would hump him to death if it got hold of him, just tearing him apart but undulating its long weasel-like body against him. 

He barked in alarm several times, hopefully to draw aggro and give Kyessy enough time to entangle them in razor vines. He also threw Prissy’s skill on: Evoker’s Fiery Blade, which bathed his snout and jaws with flame. 

Darting in, he snapped at the flimpling’s foreleg for 17 damage. Yeah, that was a lot more like it. He then activated Worry, and started tossing his head back and forth. He managed 10, 12, 16 and 14 damage in rapid succession. Which was piling up, great. Also its fur caught on fire, but it wasn’t enough to deal with over a hundred fifty HP. 

“Little help!” he growled. This close, it wasn’t possible to see what else was going on. Was one of them humping Prissy to death? Were his companions focused on the other one first?

 

You have failed a Strength (Feat of Strength) check! You lose your hold on the opponent, and your skill Worry has been disabled. You’ve been thrown off. 

You have, however, succeeded a Luck (Kismet) check! Fortune smiles upon you!

 

It didn’t feel like fortune was doing anything but cruelly laughing; the flimpling threw him across the room and he smashed into the statue of the server. He took 18 damage, leaving him with only 27. Another hit like that and he was toast. 

Then the statue toppled, first in slow motion, and just as the creature was about to land on him from its pounce, the stone serving wench crushed him to the floor. Over 500 pounds of stone crushed into the beast’s midsection. 

 

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The flimpling has taken 85 damage, and has been immobilized. 

 

It had only a handful of hit points left, and wasn’t going anywhere. Corbin wiggled out from under the statue in time to see Prissy dealing the death blow to the other flimpling, and he gained 3 hp out of the deal. She met his eyes and tipped him a big wink, then faded back out of sight.

“What about the broodmare?” he asked.

He didn’t have to wait for an answer; the thing that dragged itself out of the cellar was easily eight feet tall, a cross somewhere between an orangutan and a bison, with a huge collar of fur around its gorilla-like head, and arms longer than it was tall. Oh, and it also had the stabby stabby abdominal plates that seemed to grind together when it moved. 

It reared forward and roared, spittle flying out and incisors probably three inches long. 

“Holy shit,” he muttered. 

“I told you we shouldn’t have come this way,” Kyessy called, and shot an entangling vine arrow into the giant lesser flimpling. While backing away toward the window. 

Giant lesser flimpling indeed. Corbin enjoyed a good oxymoron, but this was ridiculous. What did the ones in the far east look like, without the lesser in front of their names? And who named these things anyway? Flimpling made it sound tiny and adorable, like a pink-colored pikachu which generated bubbles in the shape of hearts rather than electricity.

The broodmare snapped the vines off easily, but moved with exaggerated slowness. This, at least, they could use to their advantage. 

“Use the fire arrow instead,” he called. His snout was still wreathed in flame from the five minute spell that had drained out over half his mana, and he rushed in for a quick bite before this behemoth could grind him into a pulp with one swing of her ham-sized fists. 

Fire arrow after fire arrow battered her, forcing her to keep her forearms up in front of her face. This was effective, but meant she couldn’t move. Prissy, meanwhile, was edging around to get in behind her. In close confines like this, the sabaton of springing was less than useless. 

“Shadow clones!” he called. 

A second later, three more versions of Prissy all sprang into being and edged around in front of the broodmare. These illusions jumped back away from a swipe of its gigantic arm, but it then got a fire arrow to the face again, and it turtled back up. 

They were doing it. It would take some time–

The broodmare had apparently lost all patience, because it surged forward, grabbed up the broken wench statue, and hurled it at Kyessy. As soon as she tried to dodge away, the gigantic lesser beast swiped an arm through all three shadow clones, and they winked out of existence.

“Kyessy! Get up!”

She didn’t.

He leaped up, and got the broodmare on the upper arm, snarling and chomping and dealing that sweet, sweet fire damage. Another roar came, this one very loud. Her huge hand swung over to crush him or rip him off her or both, but he let go and flopped to the ground, then bit her again, on the lower leg this time. He got in another flaming hot bite before she lumbered into motion to attack again. 

The beast roared once more, and this time in quick succession Corbin found his hp bar refilling. Prissy had gotten around to helping out after all. And judging by the rapid decline of the broodmare’s HP bar, she had gotten some serious sneak attack damage done. He darted in for another bite, then backed off before another giant fist pounded him into a corgi pancake. 

Another few seconds later, and the broodmare roared, flailed, groaned, took another bite from Corbin while she was occupied with the Shadow Walker, and finally friggin died. 

Great news: in this new form, he could apparently hold items, so when the loot appeared, he wasn’t inundated with those annoying messages. 

 

You have defeated 3 lesser flimplings!

You gain 600 xp. 

You have earned 5 gold, 4 silver and 29 copper. 

You have gained 2 lesser flimpling pelts. 

You have gained Enervating Strike.

You have gained a major healing potion.

 

Corbin immediately grabbed up the healing potion and gave it to Kyessy, whose HP bar was down in the red (what he knew to be red, anyway, since he was now colorblind). Now that he was closer, he could see Immobilized, Stunned, and Bleeding were floating beneath her HP bar, each with their own icons. Immobilized had a boot with a slash through it, Stunned was a head with a halo of circular lines and stars, looking a little bit like a diagram of an electron, and Bleeding was just a big old blood droplet… probably red. She took the potion with a shaky hand, slurped it down and winced. But a twinkle of little bells and a bit of glowing later, her HP bar refilled and she slowly got to her feet.

“Can we make it a rule to have those potions on hand at all times?” Kyessy croaked.

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